Immersive Technologies

Creative growth in education

Visualize a learning journey where storytelling goes beyond traditional boundaries, seamlessly merging the physical and digital to craft fully immersive experiences. That’s the essence of the program designed by Bart-Jan Steerenberg, Learning Experience Designer of the minor Immersive Environments (Communication and Multimedia Design).

This program transforms students into experience designers, where they’re not just learning—they’re experimenting with technology to tell stories that engage all the senses, from soundscapes and visuals to physical touch.

The students work on real-world projects with inspiring organizations like Asics, Cinekid, Sherlocked, and the Amsterdam Light Festival. Together, they are redefining what it means to design experiences, merging art, technology, and creativity to fuel innovative thinking and creative growth.

City of Glasses

New technologies are having an increasing impact on our daily lives and urban environments, with the physical and digital worlds becoming increasingly intertwined. It is expected that immersive technologies, such as AR glasses, will play an important role in how we experience and interact with public space. This raises questions about the impact on our behaviour and perception of that space.

The Academic Workshop Extended Reality & the Public Space of Amsterdam's Urban Innovation and R&D team investigates how the municipality can prepare for the use of these technologies. Their use raises pressing social, political and ethical questions, especially about power relations, interaction, mobility and privacy. Understanding future scenarios is therefore important to safeguard public values such as inclusivity, transparency and autonomy.

In this context, students from the transdisciplinary minor Urban Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences were tasked with designing AR prototypes based on two future scenarios (desirable and undesirable). The aim was to investigate how the use of AR can influence public values in a hybrid public space as well as initiate a broader discussion on the use of these technologies in public space. Based on these prototypes and concepts, the project City of Glasses was born about which Marjolijn Ruijg, lecturer-researcher at the Civic Interaction Design (FDMCI) research group, shares her experiences.

City of Glasses is an immersive experience developed with support from CoECI for the Living Lab at the Marineterrein. This experience explores different possible future scenarios for the city, in which digital technology plays a dominant role. The question is how this technology will be used and how it will affect the experience of the city.

During the experience, the user is shown and heard three different perspectives, each highlighting a different impact of technology on city life. These scenarios, based on speculations about future uses of AR, make the possible tensions and frictions palpable on a personal level.

City of Glasses is an AR-experience that makes the future use of AR technology in public space experienceable, critically interrogates it and sets the debate about it in motion.

Interludes from the Immersive Lab

1) InnerGroove

Jaap Evenhuis, lecturer-researcher at CMD, shows live from the Immersive Lab the result of artistic research into an immersive installation based on bio-feedback data, spatial sound, interactive Leds/ lights/ projection/ laser.

The objective is to make people aware of their own state of being, by capturing their data and make this data experienceable involving different senses (like feeling, hearing, seeing) and then guiding them to a calmer state.

2) ‘Dry' practice on your power pitch

Steven Lips, lecturer at Communication and Creative Business (CO-CB) and presentation buddy at SIMPELpresenteren.com, also shows, with a demonstration from the Immersive Lab, how to successfully practise your presentation without a physically present audience.

Both immersive experiments are supervised by Mike van der Meulen. He is project leader and key user of the Beeldlab, including the Immersive Lab.

About the speakers

Bart-Jan Steerenberg is a seasoned Learning Experience Designer and Researcher specializing in creativity. He serves as the Manager of the Minor Immersive Environments program within the Communication and Multimedia Design department at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

As the founder and director of The Institute of Creativity (TIOC), Bart-Jan is dedicated to fostering creative growth in education.

His extensive background encompasses media production, applied gaming, sound engineering, and immersive environments, having contributed to the creation of sponsored films, animations, documentaries, advertisements, and apps.

Bart-Jan is passionate about unlocking the power of creativity and inspiring the next generation of creative thinkers and doers.

Marjolijn Ruijg is a designer, researcher and lecturer. She is Senior Lecturer of the Learning Community Urban Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

She has a bachelor degree of Graphic Design from Gerrit Rietveld Academy and a master degree (MSc) of Media Technology from Leiden University.

From the early nineties she worked as interaction designer on several new media projects (e.g. The Digital City Amsterdam, Ars Electronica Austria, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). Her research is mainly in the field of Urban Interaction Design and the future of the digital city.

Jaap Evenhuis is lecturer-researcher at the CMD programme, where he has worked since 2008. Together with Frank Kloos, Mirjam Vosmeer and Bart-Jan Steerenberg, he designed and started the minor Immersive Environments, first in the Treehouse NDSM. With a focus on blending the physical and digital worlds.

Steven Lips is teacher at Communicatiion and Creative Business (CO-CB). He is also a presentation buddy at SIMPELpresenting, an initiative to, among other things, bring more structure to presentations and thus make more impact.

Mike van der Meulen is projectleader and key-user of the Beeldlab, including the Immersive Lab. He ensures that the desire of education is translated to suppliers. The main exit point is to create labs that are dummy-proof, so that students and staff, without too much technical background, can get started with our labs.

Loes Wernsen acts as permanent moderator during our Food for Thought sessions.

She is a versatile education professional with a background in concept development, branding and creativity. Loes works as a lecturer-researcher and education advisor at the AUAS and previously at HKU.

Within CO-CB (Communication & Creative Business) education, Loes developed an ‘educational game’.

She is also involved in various projects.

At the Education & Research team of the DMCI faculty, she fulfils the role of educational advisor.

In cooperation with:

Civic Interaction Design

Want to know more about the research group Civic Interaction Design at the Centre for Applied Research FDMCI? Then take a look at this portal.

Centre of Expertise Creative Innovation

If you are curious what exactly the CoE Creative Innovation does, you can find more information on the website.

Centre for Applied Research FDMCI

For a complete picture of our research centre, please visit the homepage.

Beeldlab BPH

Curious about the possibilities of the Beeldlab? Take a look online or drop by the Benno Premsela House!