Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2025 - IAT 445 D100

Immersive Environments (4)

Class Number: 3395

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 3 – Dec 2, 2025: Thu, 8:30–10:20 a.m.
    Surrey

  • Prerequisites:

    Completion of 60 units, including IAT 343 with a minimum grade of C-.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduces advanced 3D computer animation and virtual world building techniques. Integrates hands-on fundamentals with design praxis and theoretical and research concerns. Fundamentals are complemented with examples from current research and design praxis. The studio aspect of the course will include assignments focusing on specific animation and behaviour modeling techniques and a team-based design project.

COURSE DETAILS:

The course will cover the following topics.

  • Introduction to Mediated, Virtual, and Augmented Reality (MR/VR/AR), broadly referred to as Extended Realities (XR):
    • Overview, Background, and Motivation
    • Definitions
    • History and development
    • Different kinds of alternate realities
    • Presence, immersion, and reference frames
  • Overview of technologies
    • Hardware, software, and interfaces
    • How to move through alternate realities
    • How to interact with alternate realities
  • Designing for human capabilities:
    • Perceptual, cognitive, sensorial, and physiological modalities
    • The human in multiple realities
  • What can go wrong: Adverse side effects
    • From motion sickness to disorientation, strain, usability, and practical challenges
    • Design guidelines
  • Closing the action-perception loop: Interaction and feedback
    • The human in the loop
    • Input, output, and what happens in between
    • Interaction paradigms
  • How to design alternate realities and MR/VR/AR (XR) content
    • Principles for designing for alternate realities
    • Determining context: e.g., training, learning, exploring, gaming, storytelling/narratives, socially interacting (synchronously & asynchronously), visualizing data & sensemaking
    • Iterative design and evaluation
    • Innovation, entrepreneurial considerations
    • User interface guidelines for alternate realities
    • User studies in alternate realities
  • Implications, potentials, and challenges in designing alternate realities
    • Scientific, health, and technological aspects
    • What should or shouldn’t we design? Social, societal, cultural, and ethical perspectives
    • Artistic, aesthetic, and narrative perspectives
  • Responsibility, ethics, and the future of alternate realities

Current research topics and challenges, as well as design guidelines and practices, will be covered across the course.

The course will culminate in a final interactive project and project pitch (oral/video). The assignments and projects will use Unity 3D.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

After successfully completing the course, students should be able to do the following:

  • Critically engage with, reflect, discuss, and analyze interactive VR/MR/AR (abbreviated as XR) experiences using and applying relevant scholarly frameworks, theories, and concepts
  • Explain, evaluate, and discuss current challenges of XR on the technical, ethical, perceptual, and user experience level
  • Prepare an XR research proposal and evaluate its feasibility, including a clear motivation and argument for the gap in literature or current state of the art, and arguments for its contribution
  • Design and create a real-time immersive/XR experience that identifies the context of participants and stakeholders, and takes advantage of the potential of the technology. This includes being able to argue convincingly why it makes sense to use the chosen technology and its potential integration in larger systems.
  • Being able to design, run, analyze, and present user studies/evaluation/research of an XR system/user experience/performance

Grading

  • Individual assignments 30%
  • Participation 7%
  • Team project 48%
  • Project pitch/presentation 15%

NOTES:

What projects are feasible? While students have considerable freedom in choosing their team projects, there are a few guidelines and restrictions:

  • They must be interactive (including user interaction, smooth user locomotion, and animation), immersive, and 3D. That is, you will design and build a 3D virtual experience and display it immersively, e.g., in a (provided) head-mounted display. It should not induce negative side effects such as cybersickness.
  • No killing/torture/violent/combat games or pornography. Such topics are overdone; instead, our goal is to encourage and incentivize innovation and exploration of new ideas. Projects are encouraged to push the medium and challenge viewers to rethink common theoretical, technical, or cultural assumptions.
  • Address this semester’s Design Challenge (announced and discussed at the beginning of the course).

Students are expected to review technology-related video tutorials independently.

REQUIREMENTS:

Recommended prerequisites:

This course will be a chance for you to apply and bring together many of the skills you acquired in earlier courses. As IAT 445 involves creating a short team project video, some background in planning, shooting, and editing videos would be advantageous. Having taken game design courses will also be advantageous (e.g., IAT 167: Digital Games; IAT 312: Foundations of Game Design; IAT 410: Advanced Game Design).
This course will provide an excellent opportunity to utilize and improve upon skills cultivated in other SIAT courses, including but not limited to 3D modeling, animation, programming, rapid prototyping, iterative design, agile development, effective user testing to improve your projects, human perception, and cognition, and how to apply it to your project; image editing and sound design, sketching and storyboarding, structured ideation/brainstorming approaches such as affinity diagramming, effective teamwork, effective studying, professional writing and presentation skills, pitching your project professionally, critiquing projects, incorporating critique to improve your project and using an iterative planning, drafting, and revision process throughout your projects.

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Readings, video tutorials/presentations, lecture notes, and relevant research papers will be provided through the course management system (Canvas) and will be updated on an ongoing basis as technology and research evolve.

REQUIRED READING:

Jerald, J. (2016). The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery and Morgan & Claypool. ISBN: 978-1-97000-112-9 doi: 10.1145/2792790 (available online through SFU library)

REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.

To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit: 


RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.