Sketching Immersive Information Spaces: Lessons learned from experiments in ‘sketching for and through virtual reality’

This paper presents the lessons learned from a design workshop exploring methods for early exploration of immersive information spaces, such as Virtual Reality (VR). The methods explored cover design situations both designing for VR, and designing through VR, in varying degrees of fidelity. The workshops shared the common factor of attempting to enable a feedback loop between sketching activities and the more didactic and time consuming prototyping processes. From our analysis, we found that to achieve true ‘sketchiness’ in an immersive VR settings, tool proficiency naturally becomes a decisive factor, since a lot of new techniques needs to be learned and gained experience with. Furthermore, it is evident that the mental shift, from flat to 360 degree design, was challenging, but also the enabler of new creative constraints from which the designer can explore the boundaries of the design space. We conclude by arguing for the development of more formalized patterns, materials and tools to not just enable immersive sketching, but also enable grasping the immersive design space itself by motivating the explorations and happy accidents when ‘doodling’ in the immersive space.