What is the future of reading? With new technological tools enabling immersive content consumption, what are the possibilities? How can this technology be used to make the reading experience more immersive and unique? What are the possibilities with new technological tools enabling immersive content consumption.
Role
UX Designer
Industry
Entertainment
Duration
1 Day
Personal Project
Outcome
Exploring the possibilities of augmented reality visors, the experimental objective of this research resulted in the realisation of a concept for an immersive, augmented reading experience.
The challenge
New technological tools, such as advanced viewers that enable immersive multimedia content enjoyment, will one day be commonplace in most homes around the world. How can this technology be used to make the reading experience more immersive and unique?
How can we imagine what it will mean to "read a book" in the future?
Research Goals
To create a more immersive reading experience, I questioned the way we read today. What does it really mean to get lost in a book? Many people feel completely immersed when reading, whereas in this case you feel immersed in a VR experience. Research is focusing on how the imagination works in a virtual environment, especially when you can perceive things differently. VR spaces can change the way we interpret stories, altering their original meaning. One possible solution may lie in how the interaction between our bodies, the images we create for ourselves and the VR visualization affects our reading experience.
Benchmark
There are currently technologies that aim to make the reading experience more immersive. The first company I report on is Sol Reader, which makes glasses that allow the wearer to completely isolate themselves while reading. Storysight, on the other hand, uses Gen AI to reproduce the scenarios and characters of the story. Finally, BookWander exploring the transformation of traditional written fiction into an immersive virtual reality experiences.
The discovery
People imitate the story as they read, gradually building up the characters and scenarios and enriching them with more and more details as they read. It happens that when reading the most random events of the stories, the imagination gives less prominence to the characters of the story, turning them into blurred silhouettes in order to emphasize the actions or the emotional aspect of the characters.
The beauty of imagination
The beauty of reading is imagination. Everyone creates characters in their own way, with characteristics that make each story unique.
Vague Characters
When reading, the imagination tends to lose certain details about certain characters or environments to emphasize the events of the moment.
The vision
The ability to completely transform the reading experience by presenting multimedia content on the peripherals that complements the reading of the book by projecting the story being read through AI.
Personalization of the experience:
By personalizing the content read, the user will have the possibility of having the script of the reading projected in front of him/her, modified according to the characteristics imagined during the reading, adapting the characters to the ideas that come to mind during the reading.
We can change the colour of our hair and personalise our character using a colour selector.
It is possible to change the physical characteristics that are reworked in the story using a character description card.
By reading the book, the Vision Pro identifies the specific passage and generates a series of images that are projected to the user.
Next steps
Neural connections: The integration of a neural connection to the visor will enhance the immersive experience by making imaginative adjustments more direct and easier.
Conclusion
No, we will not end up reading all the books and watching the film. The immersive reading experience should not be seen as an activity that can be applied to all books. The aim is to apply this technology to short stories, not only to reduce the cognitive load that such an experience requires, but also to apply it to specific literary titles, from comedies to short fantasy stories to theatre scripts, proposing a new way of enjoying the most famous literary stories.
