"Click twice to immerse" A new emerging interaction paradigm?

For me one of the key things around the Apple Vision Pro launch is not the device, but VisionOS and the new interaction concepts it's introducing. One of the greatest innovations is the way you can go in stages from flat 2D content in a window seamlessly to a rich and immersive full space experience - Apples calls it: "The Immersion Spectrum", as illustrated in the picture above.

The key thing for me is:

An immersion spectrum could be implemented completely independently from the device moving forward!

The building blocks are there, but it's not fully implemented yet. Let me explain.

A closer look at the immersion spectrum in VisionOS with Keynote as an example

In the principles of spatial design video this immersion spectrums gets explained with the Keynote app as the example:

Stage 1: Window with 2D content

You basically have your app - in this case Keynote - in a window floating in the room. The app feels totally familiar to your desktop app and you can work with it.

Stage 2: Dimming and focus on the presentation

If you move now ahead one stage within the immersion spectrum, the app functions fade away, the surroundings are getting dimmed and you have the focus just on just your slides.

Stage 3: Rich and full space immersion

And last but not least you can enter a fully immersive experience, where you suddenly stand on stage of a realistic theater, like you were giving a TED talk and rehearse your presentation.

How this could work even in the browser in todays web experiences

Let's take BMW or IKEA as an example to transfer the immersion spectrum approach from VisionOS to today's web experiences:

Imagine you browse the BMW website and explore a certain car. (Stage 1) - now you flip through the interior pictures and enlarge some of them, to see them bigger on your screen (Stage 2) - how about it takes you now only one more click and you suddenly sit in the car in a full screen 3D experience and can explore the interior from all angles, even leave the car and walk around it? (Stage 3)

Or imagine you explore different options for kitchen chairs on the IKEA website. (Stage 1) - you click on the images of a few key chairs you like to enlarge them (Stage 2) - how about it takes you now only one more click and suddenly you stand in a kitchen showroom by IKEA in a full screen 3D experiences and you can explore matching furniture? (Stage 3)

I truly believe that even this richer Web or App experiences - which for example could be powered by either WebGL or even Pixel Streaming solutions - can bring the immersion spectrum to life in todays experience and make it much richer.

And of course the building blocks are already there: There are already 3D experiences on the website in both cases. You can look around in a BMW already today (it's just somewhat limited in what you can do and where it's available) and also IKEA has at least 3D room planning applications already available.

What's missing is a seamless experiences which lends itself to every picture you see and that you can go seamless back and forth on the immersive spectrum, no matter where you are on the website.

We could even go one step further and have the flat 2D information architecture of a website linked with place in a 3D world corresponding to the content. Imagine you enter the kitchen showroom from a chair you are interested in, you walk around in the kitchen, stand in front of a great lamp you discovered and you can go back on step on the immersion spectrum and will land on the detail page from exactly this lamp.

I think VisionOS and the apps getting developed for it will explore this immersion spectrum and its seamless transitioning a lot in the not too distant future and I wouldn't be surprised if a) this concept get's extended to iOS and even MacOS at some point and b) if developers and experience designer will adopt this new interaction paradigm and implement it elsewhere.