Tales of Spatial Transformation: How to Mix Digital and Physical Without Destroying the World

Javier Soto Morras, Raphaël de Courville Humans are spatial
creatures. We evolved to navigate complex environments and
manipulate three dimensional objects. Yet our digital life today is
mostly confined to the thin rectangular space of a screen. Not only
have touchscreens restricted our hands to a form of glorified
finger painting,  but the digital world in general hasn’t made
great use of our abilities for spatial reasoning and situation
awareness… until now. We are standing at the edge of yet another
major technological shift: spatial (AR, VR, MR), cognitive (ML, AI)
and physical (IoT, Wearables) computing are on the verge of
reshaping reality. The internet is increasingly weaving itself into
the fabric of our physical reality, and the future will be a
complex layer cake of digital and physical elements rolled into one
continuous ambient connected experience, a blend of real and
virtual that is more than the sum of its parts. While the
smartphone is unlikely to completely go away, it will not remain
the dominant computing platform forever. What comes next will
require a very different perspective on design, interaction,
service design, entrepreneurship, etc. For anyone dealing with the
impact of digital media on a daily basis, this should be an
exciting (if somewhat overwhelming) prospect. The promise of a
digitally mediated and fully personalised experience of reality
might convince people to give up even more of their data. It will
reify and amplify some of the negative side effects of predictive
and recommendation algorithms we already observe online (filter
bubbles, racial biases, profiling, etc). The spatial transformation
of digital media, communication, and technology will give a new
dimension to moral, ethical, and political issues we only face
online today. How will we guard against unintended consequences,
and ensure that informed consent and personal freedom survive in
the process? To deal with spatial transformation and address
emerging needs, we will have to invent a new design discipline
incorporating spatial, interactive, behavioral, human-centered and
ethical design concerns.