Empathy, a word often used yet little understood is critical component of any XR experience and separates XR from all other media. This talk covers three empathy deepening XR techniques distilled from 4 years of research from thousands of players in our own XR Lab for Google, Hidden Path, Survios, 'Beat Saber', 'Fragments' (HoloLens), and 3 unannounced titles: Empathy Hurdles, Empathy Bridges, and Empathy Channels. Whether it's to reduce grieving; create branded emotions from Apple; or bring to life deeply rich narrative spaces for the Harry Potter IP; these three empathy techniques double your XR creation's ability to create emotional depth.
Takeaway
Participants walk away with three frameworks for creating empathy and more importantly weaving richer emotional experiences especially through interaction. Empathy Hurdles to increase compassion, Empathy Bridges to magnify social emotions, and after these, Empathy Channels to increase a pantheon of emotions such as feelings of accomplishment, wonder, surprise, excitement, and desire.
Intended Audience
Brands, IP holders, and game developers interested in leveraging XR's unprecedented capacity for generating empathy to strategically create designs that deliver and enhance their mission objectives. These tips target a brand, IP, and game's emotion profile and emotion architecture to the point where simply turning around the XR space opens empathy to create a series of emotions that feels like narrative even without a story.