Over the course of the past ten years, my team and I have successfully designed and implemented (produced) more than a dozen immersive installations within a research focus. It is with the emergence of technologies for creating and working with immersive, interactive environments (virtual reality, augmented reality, sensor networks, wearable computing, smart environments, etc.), that the design of immersive spaces has become a viable process. Hence working with such spaces and installations is still very new. Artists have been creating interactive experiences using these technologies for a little more than a decade, while the use of these environments in research has been mostly confined to virtual reality and related technologies. The convergence of immersive technologies from disparate fields into a coherent and powerful set of tools for immersive design is no older than a few years, and, of course, just as the technologies are still evolving rapidly, research based on their use is only beginning to develop.
Research that embraces immersive design requires new methodologies and these, too, are still very experimental. Immersive spaces are different from conventional experimental designs. Immersive environments are increasingly multimodal - that is, visual and auditory and tactile or haptic. They are "ecological" in the sense of being global, holistic and systemic - they engage all of a person, not just targeted aspects. Furthermore, they often generate surprises - this is a consequence of their ecological nature.
Our experience has demonstrated that the creation of these environments demands a three phase process :
CONCEPTION/DESIGN
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DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION
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EXPERIMENTATION/EVALUATION
This might look like the classic life cycle of any project, but each of these phases is substantial - these are complex projects to organize. Let us examine just one of our projects to get a better sense of what is involved. I like to call this project "Virtuoso" - all of our installation projects have a distinct title. This project draws upon another key principle we have identified over the course of our development work - immersive installations that have a research (scientific) focus should serve a specific and well-identified need. This is distinct from artistic installations which may or may not serve such a need. "Virtuoso" is being developed to provide an engaging experience to adolescents with motor impairments, who experience both growing isolation and a tendency towards depression as they leave behind their childhood friends. By providing these adolescents with a virtual, online, and shared experience of architectural design within a virtual world environment, we hope not only to break the cycle of isolation and depression but potentially offer also an opportunity to develop an interest that might lead to employment.
The Design Phase of this project lasted over four years. Although this was longer than many, it is by no means atypical of the collection of installations we developed. The Design work actually consisted of two more intensive periods, each lasting from 4 to 6 months, separated by an interval during which the project was shelved. The reasons for the break were multiple, but experience shows that such breaks may be a useful part of the project development cycle (although they need not be as long as in this particular case!). Lack of resources, funding and difficulties developing a mature concept were among the reasons, and possibly also our lack of experience developing and financing complex projects. During the first intensive planning period, we organized a series of meetings with both scientists and clinicians, and agreed to develop a kind of video game experience that would include a social networking dimension as well as some form of cooperative manipulation. However, the exact nature of the video game itself never became clear.
Over the fallow period, the team pursued other projects, including several projects that harnessed the virtual world environment called "Second Life". During this work, the existence of several simulators inspired by the "Second Life" environment were identified and explored. One of these, a simulator called "OpenSim", seemed particularly interesting because it shares with "Second Life" the same simplicity of operation. The arrival of a new researcher led to renewed interest in the "Virtuoso" project, and this time the possibility of using OpenSim as a framing environment for the project gave a clear direction for development. The second period of intensive work on design was therefore able to finalize a design concept - we would lead the adolescents through the process of designing and constructing architectural projects using the virtual world environment. Furthermore, the design concept included not just the design of the immersive environment itself, but also details about the experimental protocols that would need to be followed in the third phase of the project. Indeed, we would evaluate the effect on users of the environment of the design process, compared to a control group that would play a video game.
The Production Phase involved the hiring of a summer student to do the development work. The OpenSim simulation was acquired and the necessary procedures for creating, storing and running a variety of virtual landscapes were studied and adopted. A thematic context for the project was created, pedagogical tools for guiding the young people through the process of virtual construction, and different ways for encouraging collaboration and sharing results were discussed and adopted. The summer student hired to develop the environment is an architectural student with an interest in virtual environments. The development phase is expected to last 3 to 4 months.
The Evaluation Phase is expected to take place over the course of another 4 to 5 months. This phase is, of course, completely different than the development phase - it requires very different kinds of expertise. Indeed, each of the three phases requires different mixes of expertise - this is one of the challenges posed by projects of this kind. In Phase Three, what is required are experts on experimental protocols and data analysis. Technical support for the environment itself must also be in place, and it may be necessary to make adjustments to the design of the immersive environment as a result of challenges in addressing the evaluation phase.
A brief analysis of the dozen or so projects that have been developed using this approach shows that the average duration of the Design Phase was 24 months, of the Production Phase was 10 months, and of the Testing Phase was 9 months. At least 5 of the projects were characterized by a two-step design phase with a fallow period between the two more intense design periods. From initial steps to completion took, on average, 4 years. Some of this duration is almost certainly due to working with limited monetary and human resources, but other factors included the fact that we had to invent research methodology as we progressed, that the projects require different mixes of expertise at different phases, and that creation, implementation and testing of these environments is necessarily complex and demanding work. Perhaps with the benefit of experience, it will be possible to limit the time span to less than 3 years. This is important, since most grants are awarded for three year periods - projects which extend significantly beyond three years are therefore extremely difficult to bring to term in an academic environment. Indeed the early projects in our slate of initiatives were actually taken through only to the end of Phase Two, a result of the need to provide some constraints before procedures and research methodologies became clearer. (Nine of the dozen projects completed or underway are shown in the table below. The projects which are excluded from this list are those which have not yet progressed beyond the Design Phase.)
| # | Project | Phase | Duration (mo.) | Expertise |
| Ariadne Emerging | Design | Performance designer, choreographer, researcher | ||
| Production | Singer, dancer/choreographer, video production team | |||
| Documentation | Video production team, researcher, designer | |||
| Incarnatus | Design | Performance designer, singer, theatre technician, programmer, researcher | ||
| Production | Singer, theatre technician, programmer, researcher | |||
| Virtualities in Dusseldorf | Design | Designer, researcher | ||
| Production | Researcher, designers, programmer/technician, virtual content creators, museum staff, translator | |||
| Augmented Reality for Bloorview Kids Rehab | Design | Researchers, designers, programmer/technician, clinicians | ||
| Production | Researcher, designer, programmer/technician, hospital patients | |||
| Ulysses : A Sound Geography | Design | Researchers, designer, composer | ||
| Production | Researcher, designer, composer, programmer/technician | |||
| EcoOracle | Design | Researchers, designer, programmer | ||
| Production | Researcher, designer, programmer/technician | |||
| EMIR Demos | Design | Researcher, designers/programmers | ||
| Production | Researcher, programmers/technicians | |||
| Pro(x)thèse | Design | Researchers, designer, composer | ||
| Production | Researchers, sexologist, composer, programmer/technician, fashion engineer, photographers, artists, clinicians | |||
| Experimentation | Researchers, programmer/technician, clinicians, sexologist | |||
| Virtuoso | Design | Researchers, designers | ||
| Production | Researchers, designers, architect, programmer/technician | |||
| Experimentation | Researchers, designers, programmer/technician, data analyst | |||
It is worth noting that work of this nature may have been possible only within the context of extended funding such as within a Research Chair. The availability of significant funding levels every year over a seven year grant, obviating the need to reapply for funding every two to three years, made this effort viable. Now that procedures and methods are more well defined, such projects can be managed within shorter term funding arrangements, but the initial development work would have been very difficult to undertake within a standard academic grant environment.
