When Digital Experiences Enhance vs. Consume Your World
- Chris Burgess
- Dec 16, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 15
With XR, there are a number of different acronyms to describe where a technology sits on the spectrum of realities, but why should the average person care? The problem is we're focusing on the individual technologies instead of the experience.
Instead of getting lost in terminology, let’s focus on whether the experiences enhance or consume your world.
Experiences that Enhance vs. Consume
These two concepts provide a clearer lens to understand how technology integrates into our lives.
Immersive experiences are digital-first. They demand our full attention, are all-consuming, transporting us into virtual or augmented worlds. Whether it’s stepping into a digital Colosseum in VR or navigating a game-like interface overlaid on reality, immersive experiences prioritise engagement within a fully digital environment.
Additive experiences, on the other hand, layer digital elements onto the real world without taking us out of it - they enhance our experience, not replace it. Think of navigation tools that overlay arrows onto your surroundings, historical facts appearing as you walk past a landmark, or real-time stats on a run. These experiences enhance reality rather than replace it.
How Technology Enables These Experiences
The type of hardware used determines whether an experience is primarily immersive or additive.
Headsets are built for immersive experiences. While they can support additive features, their primary purpose is to fully engage users in a digital world. Due to their size and weight, they are generally designed for indoor use, where users can be fully present in a virtual space without concerns about mobility or environmental awareness.
Glasses, on the other hand, are designed for additive experiences. They seamlessly integrate digital elements into the real world while allowing users to stay aware of their surroundings. Whether indoors or outdoors, smart glasses are becoming increasingly effective thanks to advancements in AI, which enable them to understand and respond to the real-world environment more dynamically than ever before.
Real-World Examples
Navigation (Additive): Instead of looking at a map, imagine virtual arrows appearing in front of you, guiding you to your destination. This keeps you engaged with the world around you while making navigation more intuitive and effortless.
Learning (Immersive): Explore ancient Rome by walking through a fully interactive, digital reconstruction of the Colosseum. You can move through the space, view historical details, and experience the scale of the ancient world as if you were there.
Running (Additive): Your running routes are visualised in 3D, with virtual markers showing your pace, heart rate, relative to elevation changes. This is spatial computing combining data from wearable IoT devices with spatial mapping to provide actionable insights.
Entertainment (Immersive): Watching a movie in a VR cinema, where you're surrounded by a virtual theater environment, making you feel like you're in an actual cinema even when you're at home. Some platforms even allow social interaction, letting you watch with friends in a shared virtual space.
Why It Matters
Understanding the difference between additive and immersive experiences helps us move beyond jargon to focus on what truly enhances our lives. The key isn’t the technology itself—it’s how it integrates with our world to make interactions more seamless, engaging, and meaningful.
These experiences are part of a broader concept known as spatial computing—a way of integrating digital information into our physical world in meaningful, interactive ways. Rather than thinking in terms of acronyms like XR, spatial computing is a more intuitive way to describe how technology bridges digital and physical realities, whether through immersive or additive experiences.
Want to learn more about spatial computing? Check out these resources:
Overviews
Beginner-Friendly Overview: A great introduction to the core concepts.
Comprehensive Overview: A more in-depth look at spatial computing presented by this author, Chris Burgess.
Deep-dives
Technical Deep Dive: A collection of videos from Apple covering more technical aspects of their ecosystem.
In-Depth Ecosystem Exploration: This weekly podcast, VR Download, provides a detailed look at the latest advancements in the next era of computing.
Key Voices in Spatial Computing:
If you have other people or resources you'd recommend, please let me know!
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