Why is the web not immersive?
A story of two parallel paths for human-computer interfaces coming together.
How Mozilla Plans to Build VR Into the Foundation of the Web — Road to VR
Someone in the comments of the above article mentioned how the game industry leaped into 3D as soon as it was possible for no other reason than… 3D! Because they could! Because it was cool.
Games progressed from something as simple as Pong to Super Mario in just 10 years, then jumped straight into experimenting with perspective 3D (parallax) around the same time artistic 2D was popular. Before long, we had cinematic cut scenes and complex game interactions. To this day, we still see a push for more complex interactions and more immersive graphics.
But with the web, we went from not even being able to see what we were doing (punch cards), to Command Line Interfaces, then finally to GUIs in the 70s. Even though there were massive improvements on this method of interacting with our computers, the fundamentals did not change for another 30 years… not like they did with gaming interfaces.
Gamers expected fundamental shifts in how they game with each generation. From the limitations of top-down gaming, to sidescrolling, to FPS games, these each required designers and consumers alike to radically shift their perspective and behaviors.
The Evolution of Computer Games: from 1970’s to the modern era — Docsity
The same could not be said for computer interfaces.
These were ‘radical’ changes relative to GUIs, but not really in the larger scheme of how we interact with computers.
(Here are some other articles showing the evolution of the web: one, two.)
When the internet was finally exposed to consumers in the 90s, the way we interacted with computers still did not change very much. People did begin to explore all sorts of designs, from geocities to chat interfaces to just really zany websites… but people were already mostly tied to flat GUI screens.
Mobile phones caused the biggest shake up with the introduction of touch interfaces. But even that did not change the ‘meta’ from 2D.
So now that we actually have the ability to create really great 3D interfaces, and the technology to showcase it… how do we break out of this mold?
The key is content, and how we think about the form and function of information.
Games center around inherently more immersive content. The environment itself is the content, which is crafted to be engaging and entertaining. We are interacting with the environment, and everything inside of it.
But most other content across the web is inherently informational. Outside of games, we interact with computers as a means to an end. For the most part, that end is just to get information, or share information.
Therefore, the ‘environment’ of the web is simply a container for information.
We don’t access websites for the sheer joy of it. We don’t ‘play’ or even ‘experience’ YouTube, social media, reddit, NYTimes, or even elijahclaude.com… So why would we dive into 3D? Why care about making these containers more immersive and engaging?
We simply focused on the informational content. Just like with games, we made the content more engaging, more aesthetic, more interactive. But the progress has been the form and function of information as content… not environment.
The only improvements we made for the ‘environment’ was either in response to physical containers (screensizes, touchscreens, etc), or as a means to make the information we sought more palatable and interactive (visual design and interaction design).
This may seem like a strange way of viewing the internet, but it is helpful to re-frame the entire context in order to figure out how to design something truly innovative.
So why is the web not immersive?
Because it didn’t need to be! Games had to be more immersive so that people would keep wanting to spend more time in these virtual environments. Games have to explore every new iteration of environmental concepts to keep pushing the boundaries of fun and engagement.
The web still had many advancements. But these are all focused on the manipulation and consumption of information. We have far more interactive ways of engaging with information as content than ever before.
But now we’re coming to a sort of confluence of content: Games have increasingly more information, and the web is becoming more about how you experience content.
At the same time, we are starting to reanalyze the environment of the web. Those containers that we didn’t care all that much about? They are starting to open up into a much richer environment: the real world.
Right now, that only entails things like location data, mobile notifications, timezones, languages, and even QRcodes. But the advent of augmented (and virtual) reality is introducing (or mainstreaming) more concepts like geotagging, filters, smart search, and QRcodes.
But this is only the beginning.
Now that we are able to use our environment to better contextualize our information, we are starting to realize the power of seeing the environment itself as a form of informational content!
In the coming months and years, we will finally begin to make the web more immersive. We will care more about the ‘containers’ of our information and thus attend to the environment of the web.
Why is the web not immersive? Because it didn’t need to be… because we didn’t want it to be.
But now we do.
How are you envisioning the future of the web? What would you like to see and experience when you or your kids use the internet going forward?
Let me know!
And feel free to check out more of my thoughts on my audio-journal podcast here: https://anchor.fm/trillionaire
