Mediating Presence Immersive Experience Design Workbook for UX Designers, Filmmakers, Artists, and Content Creators

Introduction 

Section I: What is Immersive Media?

Section II: What is XRXD: Designing Immersive Experiences

Section III: Discovery and Pre-Suasion                

Chapter 01 Your Purpose: Developing Your Project Vision                

Chapter 02 Understanding Your Audience                

Chapter 03 Developing Your Value Hypothesis

Section IV: Ideation and Inscription                

Chapter 04 Creating the Context Scenario                

Chapter 05 Engineering the Magic: The Feasibility of Immersive Experiences                

Chapter 06 Building the Proof of Concept

Section V: Planning and Building the Immersive Platform                

Chapter 07 Designing the System Prototype                

Chapter 08 Building the Functional System Prototype                

Chapter 09 Playtesting the Prototype

Section VI: Launching and Learning from System in Play                

Chapter 10 Attracting the Audience                

Chapter 11 Immersing the Audience                

Chapter 12 Extending Play

Section VII: Iterating Immersive Systems

Biography

Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski is a design strategist, researcher, and design and innovation coach who advocates for applying transformative design thinking and participatory design methods to the creation of media, experiences, and social change. He is an assistant professor of communication and visual arts at Thompson Rivers University. He is a former creative director of the emerging technologies conference EmTech at MIT. Before that, Peter’s design consulting career included 15 years of working on user experience (UX) design, retail, and branding programs for organizations, including global brands, start-ups, non-profit groups, and educational institutions such as MIT, Astra Zeneca, Glad, Kraft, and Loblaws. He is a recipient of the MIT President’s Citation Award for his research, design, and strategy work for the MIT Enterprise Forum. Peter’s current research explores the design of human+computer systems, immersive experiences, and the application of participatory design methodology to media making. He holds a doctoral degree in Technology in Practice (Communication and Culture), an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, and a Bachelor of Design from OCAD University.

David Tamés is a media maker working in traditional and immersive media forms. His creative practice focuses on media co-creation and immersive media production. David recently completed an MIT Open Documentary Lab Fellowship, conducting research for this book. He is a teaching professor in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University with a joint appointment in communication studies. He teaches extended realities, video, documentary, and narrative filmmaking courses. David is on the board of directors of Filmmaker’s Collaborative (supporting media makers through fiscal sponsorship and educational services) and serves on the advisory board of MedVR (a community of medical XR innovators exploring immersive technologies in healthcare and life sciences). David has produced award-winning short films and recently co-directed and co-produced Reality’s Fugue: Genesis, a virtual reality experience that provides a new take on the Genesis origin story to suggest how we create a shared world. He holds an MFA from the Dynamic Media Institute at MassArt and an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab.

“Peter (Zak) Zakrzewski and David Tamés go beyond the hype to deliver a long-overdue critical and robust methodology for creating a 'better human+computer ecosystem.'  Comprehensive, well-researched, and drawn from practical experience, this is not only a 'how to' make but a 'how to think about' book that helps practitioners to deeply leverage the full range of expressive affordances offered by immersive tech.”

Celia Pearce, Professor of Game Design, XR and game designer and author of PLAYFRAMES and Communities of Play