4. Fusing realities with tech magic.
Modern technology is your best friend when designing your immersive experience; it is your biggest enabler to make your wildest dreams come true. The technologies making this possible are also known as ‘Immersive technologies’. Let’s dive into some examples and explore how to they can cater to our senses:
We will start with the two most common senses that applications have been build for; visual and sound. This includes technologies underneath the umbrella term ‘Extended Reality’ such as Virtual Reality (VR); technology that replaces the user physical environment with a digital one, Augmented Reality (AR); technology that acts as a digital overlay over the physical environment, and Mixed Reality (MR); a hybrid technology combining both VR and AR. Devices created around these capabilities generally combine visual, sound and haptic technologies into one.
With the right visual and sound design capabilities, these technologies can take your immersive experiences to the next level.
Can you feel that?
From the three left over senses, the one that is furthest in development is touch. Through haptics, technologies that make use of force, vibrations, heat or motion, you can engage the tactile senses of your audience. A simple example of this are the vibrations of your mobile phone, alerting you when you receive a message or an incoming call, or vibrations within a gaming controller, triggering when the user hits an object in a game.
A company making great strives with this technology is Sensit; a company giving their customers the ability to enhance their products with their haptic sensation. Check out their innovative solutions in the gaming, automotive and entertainment industries: https://sensit.tech/
But, this technology also has potential to elevate your business’s practices, such as virtual reality training. Take haptx as an example, a technology company that builds haptic gloves for a virtual reality and robotics. They believe that “people learn best by doing” and with their haptic gloves they can enhance this experience by allowing users to grip virtual objects and experience that sensation as if it were real. Check out their exciting cases here: https://haptx.com/vr-training/
Mmm.. that smells good!
Have you ever walked into a store and had the smell of their products hit your face? If so, it is likely that you have been subject to the store’s attempt at creating an immersive retail experience. Take Rituals as an example, the Dutch luxury brand combining home and body products. When walking past their store, you are instantly hit with an aroma of different smells incentivising you to come in. And, once you have entered the store, the scents are intensified allowing you to experience their brand. Naturally, the products available in the store would already create a fragrant experience, but with the help of smell technology, also known as olfactory technology, they can truly immerse their customers and give them a taste of what they have to offer.
"Taste the feeling."
Speaking of taste, this sense can simply be used to let your audience eat certain things to easily convey certain aspects of your brand and story. Think of experiences such as a wine tasting that let’s you indulge in the variety they have to offer, or a culture fair that let’s you taste small bits of national dishes. These examples are quite practical, but lickable and taste bud enhancing technologies are being developed to digitally integrate taste in your experiences.
Technology is the glue that brings your narrative and sensory elements together to make it one. While not all technologies can currently be used to enhance your experiences, it does shape an exciting vision of the future where all the senses can be engaged.
