Writing in VR about the evolving interfaces between human and technology

Hello everyone,

As I turn my head to the right and gaze my eyes in the lounge space, I see a couple of people talking with each other. To my left is a black and white picture of the Louvre in Paris. Calm jazz music plays softly in the background of this cafe as I sit on a couch writing this.

One important descriptor I left out is that everything is digital. The space, the people and even the coffee (although I wish this part was real).

So whilst my physical body is my room in my tiny apartment, my digital self has chosen this dimly lit cafe to spend my afternoon.

Yes, the topic today is about VR. But what exactly inspired today’s Substack?

Whilst scrolling on my phone earlier, I stumbled on a new series of posts that Facebook recently released, showing off some of their research in VR/AR and neural interfaces. If you haven’t had a chance to read it or watch the videos, it’s pretty cool.

Having read that, I wanted to comb through my thoughts about the importance of input for immersive technologies and the experiences enabled by VR. And ultimately, why the research that Facebook is doing is so important for the continued development of this industry.

One of the many things that make VR special is a deep feeling of immersion. The feeling of being sucked into this world and letting go of what is around you physically. Being transported into a completely different space. It is this phenomenon that keeps me so interested in this technology.

Sure, there are still improvements to be made, but a future where we can work, play and socialise in a virtual world is not that far away. I’ll write about some examples of this in a future post.

A key aspect to making the digital world more and more substitutable for the physical world is the ability to send rich input into the world. So that we can interact with it with freedom and move from being a spectator to being a part of the space.

That’s why the research into various inputs including neural interfaces, hand-tracking and haptic feedback is so important. It creates different ways we can interact, influence, and receive feedback between our physical self and the digital world.

And the more intuitive it is, the more immersive it becomes.

But even with these successes, it’s still fairly very nascent and has much room to grow. So why do we need to care about it today? Especially if it’s not really ready yet?

For starters, if you’re opportunistic like me about this technology, then you believe this is definitely the direction of travel in the next decades. Moving towards a world where the physical and digital worlds become so closely intertwined we longer separate the two. We don’t know exactly what it will look like, but it will surely completely change our lives as we know it today. With a change so big, we should be on the front foot where possible.

Second, it reemphasises the importance of having a strong grasp of how people interact with technology. The last decade has been focused on the web and mobile, but we are now seeing the emergence of a whole new medium.

A whole new dimension in thinking about and designing for the interactions between human and technology.

And it’s not just about thinking. Just as the mobile age created new skills, jobs and ways of thinking - so will the immersive age. We are already seeing the acceleration of new capabilities such as game engines and hardware, and increased demand for roles and skills such as 3D/VR developers and interaction designers.

As the input fidelity grows - from controllers, hand tracking, facial tracking, neural EMG on the wrist, to embedding a microchip into your brain - the boundaries in which we design will change.

Just as I today am writing this in a virtual world with a virtual keyboard, someone else out there is holding a team meeting in VR. And someone else is scrolling through an eCommerce store trying on different clothing or buying the next NFT. This is really just the beginning, and the opportunities are wider than what we can imagine.

I’ve now exhausted the battery of my Oculus Quest so I think it’s time to sign off. Thanks for reading.

I’ll be following the developments in this space closely so feel free to subscribe for more ramblings and thoughts.