Designing for Mixed Reality

Chapter 2. What Are the End-User Benefits of Mixing the Virtual with the Real?

One of the definitions of sanity, itself, is the ability to tell real from unreal. Shall we need a new definition?

Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

The Age of Truly Contextual Information and Interpreting Space as a Medium

In this age of truly contextual information and interpretation of physical space as a medium, a unique “window on the world” is provided that will potentially yield new insights in which designers need to learn to absorb and design in order to make visual information seamlessly integrate into our real-world surroundings. Magic Leap, Microsoft, and Meta intend to make experiences that are relatively indistinguishable from reality, which is in many ways, the ultimate goal of mixed reality (MR). Magic Leap, in particular, recently suggested that it will need to purposely make its holograms “hyperreal” so that humans will still be able to distinguish what is reality and what is not. And although the amount of technical prowess needed to do this is not insignificant, it does pose a new challenge: are we ready to handle a society that is seeing things that are not real?

The 1960s was a time of wild experimentation. A time when humans first began, en masse, to experiment with mind-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The mere thought of people running around and seeing things that were not there seemed wrong to the general populace. Thus, people who indulged in hallucinogenic trips began to be classified ...