1. Importance of Physical Space
1.1 Design the Environment
When people talk about immersive experience, people often focus on the virtual part of the experience, which means only the content they see and interact with in the headset. However, the physical decoration of the physical environment is important for the experience too. The physical environment should be built to connect to the digital experience. The format of this kind of immersive experience could be either a Pop-Up store or use the existing architecture of the retail store.
1.2 Exclusive Experience
Many streetwear and sneaker brands often use the strategy of exclusiveness, like launching limit edition of the product (e.g. Adidas and Pharrell Williams, “Hu” Collection) or hosting exclusive events (e.g. “Off Campus”, Nike’s Exclusive Event With Off-White Designer Virgil Abloh for “The Ten” collection). This exclusivity is one of the reasons why streetwear culture and its consumers demand people for everything to be kept on trend while at the same time exhibiting a one of a kind fresh attitude. The advantage to designing an on-site immersive Pop-Up Installation means consumers are required to visit the experience in person, there’s no other way to see it. This builds exclusive cache around the location and the Pop-Up experience.
1.3 Devices
Another advantage of having an immersive Pop-Up Installation is people do not need to worry about the devices, which is one of the issues for spreading immersive content. It still needs time to let the technology mature and become mainstream. By simply building a VR experience and putting it online, many people will not have the access to a headset or have the ability to connect to the content. This can be seen as a missed opportunity- therefore for the I-Pop-BE we propose to make the device an extension of the Pop-Up store.
1.4 Immersive Experience
- Immersive experience is the driving concept behind the I-Pop-BE design framework. The design of the physical part of the Pop-Up should be connected to the virtual part and the combined parts should be more outstanding than the individual parts. As seen in Gestalt Psychology3 of the “Unified Whole”, which refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied. This can be done by making interactive narrative between the physical and virtual spaces- that influence the whole experience. The content is not just a video clip showcasing a product, or a video game for playing. The experience should be emphasize interactivity that is based on the dialogue between the virtual and real. Showing the product and also providing the audience ability for interacting with the narrative, if designed carefully, will generate a one of a kind emotional connection to the brand experience.
2. Virtual Space
2.1 Immersive Medium
There are several ways to provide immersive experience, including VR, AR and 360º video, and deciding what medium the experience will use is important in the early stage. It could also be something combining more than one medium as a installation. Here we are going to focus in VR. Thinking of what immersive devices should be used is the other early stage designing process. There are a lot of options now, for instance VR head-mounted display (HMD) like Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, and VR headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE, and for AR, Microsoft HoloLens is a good one. Each of them have their advantages, so pick the one that works best for the experience you want to create.
2.2 Style of the Design
When designing VR experience, it is like creating one or more environments for users. The progress is not like making a poster or filming a video clip, but it’s still good to have some mood boards and sketches first for the visuals, and also some simple storyboards before building everything. For the topics of streetwear and sneakers, visual design plays a huge role. It is a way of distinguishing the experience from others. The recommendations are checking out the style of the product, the value of the brand, and transform that into the world you are designing. In addition, getting inspiration from the works of other designers, artists, or architects is also useful when defining a style. When the consumers are in the world you built, you want to make sure they are in the world represented by the brand.
2.3 Immersive Experience Design Framework Recommendations
Below are a list of design element for the I-Pop-BE design framework.
Perspective - The recommended point of view is first person view or the god view. For interactive environments, this will make the user directly part of the environment.
Virtual Environment - The environment should be CGI or combining some 360º video footage with CGI. Trying to build the specific visuals for the environment based on the pre-defined brand style guide.
Audio - Audio not only makes people feel more immersive and could also help them focus on the content you’re showing. Using audio to guide the audience is also an excellent way for focusing attention in virtual worlds.
Interaction Design - Give audience some freedom to interact with the content. Using controllers, gesture, audio control or motion tracking are common ways for the interaction input. The interactions include the movement in the space, the ability to make impacts to the space, or the ability to make decisions to alter the content.
Storytelling - Storytelling is critical in building context for experience. Consider both the physical space and virtual space when designing the narrative. The narratives should build on the context of the product or the brand. Take the perspective of audience in this experience into consideration, make them feel like they're part of the story.
Length - Some experiences are short interactive films, others may be full length feature. For the immersive brand experience, try to keep it within 15 minutes. People get tired easy when they’re immersed in the virtual world with a headset. 15 minutes has been proven to be the target attention time. (reference here)
Comfort - Avoid motion sickness at all costs. In some cases, your user may become motion sick, consider timing when designing a motion heavy experience.
Prototype & Development of “Wonder Jam”
While coming up with this I-Pop-BE design framework for streetwear and sneaker, we developed a proof of concept. The project is called “Wonder Jam”. It is an interactive immersive experience of sneaker wonderland. As a work in progress,Wonder Jam is going to be a practice of I-Pop-BE design framework. The project is going to showcase the culture and sporting elements of sneakers. The physical environment will have some sneaker boxes, and a basketball themed style. In order to make the connection between the physical and virtual experience, the audience would see symbols from physical Pop-Up shop when they are in the virtual environment. Three different virtual environments will be built for the whole experience, including outer-space, wonderland and urban areas to express the different styles of the sneakers. For the soundtracks, classic hip-hop soundtracks for the background music will be used because Hip-Hop is one of main influences for streetwear and sneakers culture, starting from 1986 Run DMC’s track “My Adidas” to nowadays rappers not only wear the hottest kicks when they performing, but also collaborated with brands to release their signature shoes, such as Kanye West’s Adidas Yeezy Boost and Drake’s Air Jordan collaborations. For the interaction part, the audience will have the ability to move around the environment and pick of virtual content in the virtual space. They will also have the option to paint and draw something of their own in the virtual space.