How can we design virtual social spaces so that they are intuitive to navigate, comfortable to be in and help foster human connection and collaboration?

Using insights from architecture and environmental psychology from this IMX 2024 talk learn hot to create comfortable, intuitive and even awe inspiring social XR spaces to aid human connection and collaboration.

We are already seeing many large virtual spaces becoming lost to time, social VR platforms like AltspaceVR and game spaces like Echo VR. Unlike the real world there is no oversight or laws governing the protection of important virtual cultural artifacts and architecture. Unless action is being taken soon we risk loosing more digital spaces forever that will have been formative and important to many people. As more people will spend time working and playing in social virtual spaces in the coming years this problem will grow.

Reflecting on mobile technology still being with us for some time, that spatial computing is the future of human computer interaction, that the creative fields are ripe for disruption and the coming democratization of 3D and interactive content.

Last year was a strange one by all accounts. In any other year I would travel the world to attend computer graphics and XR conferences to share my insight and learn and be inspired. With all events turning virtual I did get to travel virtually to a number of events to talk about what I am most passionate about when designing virtual spaces. This post describes and links to a few of those talks and podcasts.

We live in a society today in which we both willingly and somewhat reluctantly allow technology to track our every move, with public spaces and work places offering steadily less and less privacy. The same technologies that allow tracking us and others like VR also provides possibilities to work from other places like our homes. That is a comforting thought.

Syd Mead Visual Futurist and Industrial Designer passed at his home in Pasadena at the age of 86 on December 30. 2019. His legacy will live on as his work and designs have been and continues to be a great inspiration for me.

We have shaped our surroundings as they have shaped us since the dawn of time. With human emotions and thinking affected by our environments, and VR having the power to instantly transport anyone to any imaginary space, we can look to architectural psychology and environmental storytelling to create comfortable virtual spaces that evoke the desired emotions in users to ensure that virtual spaces will shape the human experience in positive ways.

Having recently put up my virtual dojo on the social VR platform VRchat I am wondering if it might be the best platform right now for 3D artists and architects in VR to show off their work, while at the same time being a pretty good and easily accessible tool for prototyping multiplayer VR experiences.