The next level in VR is about multi-sensorial experiences

This year’s SXSW program features a total of 46 sessions about VR.

We’re at a tipping point. Future devices will only improve in their resolution, responsiveness and ergonomic intuitiveness and a growing number of designers & tools are focusing in on this resurgent field. It’s clear that VR is here to stay.

Yet, how come the technology isn’t in every household yet? (It’s been 5 years since Oculus came out). How come the medium is still seen as a toy for geeks and gamers? How come, even though Sony, Leap, Google, HTC, Oculus, Samsung (and many others) have been trialing nascent VR headsets in the market for years – it’s still hard to spot one in somebody’s home?

How can the medium improve, and live up to its promise of a true virtual reality?

To a skilled design pioneer, today’s VR combines an unprecedented immersive depth with a promise of endless creative possibilities. A candy shop to somebody wanting to take full control.

Practically, VR is a design field that combines motion, 2D aesthetics, simulated 3D, & sound design into a new, immersive user experience that gets us closer than any other medium, in giving us the ability to control people’s sensory inputs. At least – most of them – because Sight & Sound take up about 70% of our cortex activity.

The only other medium that comes this close is environmental design; where design teams get a chance to impact the physical 360 space. However, in many ways, the constraints of environmental design (budgets, regulations, gravity…) have limited creative expression dramatically. 

Hence it might seem like for designers looking to create new worlds, VR has the upper hand. Yet, there is one trick that environmental designers still have up their sleeves – it’s their ability to use Scent, Touch & Taste to amplify their experiences.

Currently, the conversation in the design community around VR seems to indicate that depriving users of the remaining 30% of sensory input is good enough. That not providing people opportunities to touch, taste and smell the worlds they visit, will push users to focus solely on what they see & hear.

“As we sense we also make sense” - Phillip Vannini 2012, Ethnographer

However countless scientific studies, show that it’s not that simple. Humans can’t just turn their senses off. For example, a study shows that even when we’re blindfolded, the color of the blind-folding fabric impacts what we taste, and the sounds we might hear in the background, drive what we smell & ultimately actually perceive in dramatic ways.

Clever entrepreneurs & experimenting brands have been tapping into the power of cross-modal influences for years, but the mainstream VR community seems to largely ignore the opportunity. Recently some isolated entrepreneurs & experimenters have started to incorporate touch input – from haptic suits to VR chairs – but those efforts are in their infancy. For example, if you’ve ever experienced the VR rollercoaster chair in Samsung’s 837 NY space, you will agree that adding Touch input makes a huge difference, but the moment the haptic motion is out of sync with what’s being shown, the illusion is lost. 

Thus, the downfall of tomorrow’s most advanced visual VR experience will be the comfort of the chair we sit in. The things we touch, smell & taste during our VR sessions impact the overall experience – and because few of the solutions in the market have considered how to harness the remaining senses, their VR experiences will continue to be subordinate to a real one. 

My work in multi-sensorial brand experience design has led me to discover the how interconnected sensorial stimulus really is – and how much work it takes to create an orchestrated brand experience.

Many times we’ve been surprised by how influential cross-modals really are – here are some examples:

• Red candies taste sweeter than yellow candies with the same sugar content
• Detergents with floral graphics literally smell up to 30% more intense than their blank alternatives
• Soft, squishy or textured product walls increase the duration people tend to hold a bottle in their hands.

Learning from this and circling back to my initial premise — I think it’s time that leaders in the VR field embrace the multi-sensorial science, and start to explore how to develop a truly immersive virtual reality. A VR that incorporates all 5, rather than just 2 of our senses.

At least that's the future I would like to see...