Welcome to my home(page)
2024Role: Concept, art direction, 3D design, development
Tools: Cinema 4D, Unity
Context: Bachelor’s thesis, Visual Communication Design, Aalto University
Description:
An experimental website prototype exploring immersion as a design method for portfolio experiences. The work investigates how spatiality, interactivity, and multisensory design can create an emotional and memorable user encounter.
The prototype formed the production part of my Bachelor’s thesis, Immersive portfolio — presenting work in a virtual space, and served as the conceptual foundation for my current landing page.
“Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus. In a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do the things that the new environment makes possible.”
— Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, p. 99
My research questions were as follows: how can immersion methods be utilized on portfolio websites and how to present work in a virtual space? Methods for creating immersion were found through narrative and challenge-based dimensions familiar from game design.
Spatial immersion became the most important immersion component in my production and was promoted by the three-dimensional soundscape and the room in which the user can move freely, as well as the first-person perspective. The microinteractions of the UI are a subtle detail in strengthening the experience of space and they supported the feeling of connection to the operating system. Evoking emotions through stories and intimacy served as triggers for emotional immersion. Challenge-based immersion was provided by moving around the space and searching for work and information items in the room. The immersion of the system depends entirely on the user's own devices, so if you browse the site on a small screen without sound, immersion will not necessarily occur. However, the soundscape is three-dimensional and the image is of high quality.
Many of the definitions and divisions related to immersion are interdependent and interwoven. Immersion is a feeling and its experience is inevitably subjective. The state of mind, preferences and truthful reporting of one's own reactions always affect the final result. However, I think the discussion around immersion and naming its dimensions and levels is useful. This kind of review helps to analyze and then utilize means for creating immersion. In particular, the definitions of the dimensions of immersion are helpful when planning a portfolio, as they concretely describe the means of creating a feeling.
In the game world intended for entertainment, these means can be taken to their extreme limits, and immersion can even be considered the goal of design. When designing websites, the ultimate purpose is usually somewhere else: conveying information or selling. When planning a portfolio, my aim for immersion must not completely overshadow, for example, usability and communication. I can still use the tools to create an emotional connection, thereby promoting memorability and user engagement. And as Janet Murray said, the feeling of immersion in itself is enjoyable and worth pursuing.