How iBranding created a virtual and immersive environment as a means to connect communities.

iBranding is an experimental virtual and immersive environment that allows users to explore virtual worlds as a way to connect communities, collaborate on projects, and create shared experiences. Even at a time when travel is restricted, these experiences are crucial in partnerships with colleagues all across the world. They worked with the Optymize team to create the iBranding Virtual Space, which allows members of the iBranding membership community of academics, researchers, instructors, and learners to construct and share ideas. They continue to reflect on what they know and what they’d like to know about leveraging immersive technologies to interact, explore, and learn through research findings, thinking tools, demos, and working sessions. It was critical to design their environment as a space that combined recognisable “real-world” iBranding features with “impossible” elements to accomplish in the actual world. The major aim, like in the physical world, was to create an experience that benefited the iBranding community while also allowing them to test the virtual arena’s limitations. This was done by dividing the virtual realm into several regions, each of which required its own set of design features.