Jun 2021 – Oct 2021
AR/VR, hybrid_space
Unmute yourself – Unit9
The research project was completed during Margo’s internship at the innovation department at Unit9 during her study at MA Narrative Environments course. It was dedicated to exploring potential product design narratives on how immersive technologies can fix the video call fatigue and improve the virtual events experience.
During the pandemic, people who worked from home began to suffer from a new phenomenon called video call fatigue. The project explored whether we can use the Unit9‘s haptic technology aligning physical and virtual worlds to solve this problem. Leveraging Margo’s previous events experience, the use case focus was made on virtual events. As a result, three product design narratives were developed (personas, user journeys and sketching), followed by an article summing up the research exploration.
From the article:
The way we communicate has changed. Moreover, the environment for communication has evolved:
● Physical spaces are becoming more and more occupied by digital devices
● The digital world becomes more realistic, using 3D graphics, 3D sound, and other immersive technologies
● Digital and physical layers merge together creating a novel type of experience for human communication
This new type of experience influences our behaviour patterns, sometimes affecting our well-being (such as in the case of Zoom fatigue). People still have a way to go to learn how to navigate these hybrid spaces and use them for effective communication and collaboration. We might view immersive technologies as a tool that is absorbing us into the unreal world. However, it could also serve as an instrument helping us to restore the connection to each other and to our inner selves, or to bring back the joy of being present and focused. The choice is on us.
Download PDF︎
Project team:
Margo Lazarenkova (UX-research, Product Design)
Yates Buckley (Technical Director)
Alberto Venditti (Interaction Director)