Immersive experiences for communication and stakeholder engagement for North Sea Ecology

Immersive technologies, such as VR, have the potential to place people at the center of an experience, often making it emotionally and cognitively intense in ways that other digital media cannot. At the same time, the unfamiliarity and complexity of the technology can make it difficult or intimidating for many people to fully engage with.

My research investigates how diverse audiences can be supported, particularly during onboarding and offboarding processes for VR experiences, and how this influences the overall engagement with and perception of virtual content. Through a combination of qualitative and experimental research methods, I aim to identify barriers to engagement, develop techniques to address them, and empirically evaluate those techniques’ impact. My goal is to develop design recommendations that help make VR experiences more effective, meaningful, and usable for stakeholder engagement and public outreach.

This research project is part of the NWO-funded HybridLabs consortium, work package 5: Knowledge Utilization. The VR applications to support immersive stakeholder engagement in offshore ecology are developed in collaboration with Wander. My PhD is a joint project of the chair groups Marine Animal Ecology (MAE), and the Cultural Geography (GEO).