QoE column: Solving complex issues through immersive narratives

Abstract

A transdisciplinary dialogue and innovative research, including technical and artistic research as well as digital humanities are necessary to solve complex issues. We need to support and produce creative practices, and engage in a critical reflection about the social and ethical dimensions of our current technology developments. At the core is an understanding that no single discipline, technology, or field can produce knowledge capable of addressing the complexities and crises of the contemporary world. Moreover, we see the arts and humanities as critical tools for understanding this hyper-complex, mediated, and fragmented global reality. As a use case, we will consider the complexity of extreme weather events, natural disasters and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, which are the risks with the highest likelihood of occurrence and largest global impact (World Economic Forum, 2017). Through our project, World of Wild Waters (WoWW), we are using immersive narratives and gamification to create a simpler holistic understanding of cause and effect of natural hazards by creating immersive user experiences based on real data, realistic scenarios and simulations. The objective is to increase societal preparedness for a multitude of stakeholders. Quality of Experience (QoE) modeling and assessment of immersive media experiences are at the heart of the expected impact of the narratives, where we would expect active participation, engagement and change, to play a key role [1]. Here, we present our views of immersion and presence in light of Quality of Experience (QoE). We will discuss the technical and creative considerations needed for QoE modeling and assessment of immersive media experiences. Finally, we will provide some reflections on QoE being an important building block in immersive narratives in general, and especially towards considering Extended Realities (XR) as an instantiation of Digital storytelling.