Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2025 - IAT 848 G100

Mediated, Virtual, and Augmented Reality (3)

Class Number: 3483

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

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

  • Prerequisites:

    IAT 806 and one of IAT 801 or 802 or 804 or 834 or permission of the instructor.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Covers the emerging field of virtual, augmented, mediated, and mixed reality from human-centered, research, technical, and ethical perspectives. Discusses and analyzes design, development, usage, and evaluation of technologies that can be used to mediate human experience and interaction with virtual and real environments including Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities (together known as XR). Investigates how these emerging technologies can affect and augment human perceptual, motor, cognitive and socio-emotional processes. Analyzes human-centered approaches to interaction with 3D real and virtual content, using visual, auditory, haptic, kinesthetic, physiological and neurophysiological modalities. Design guidelines and practices are covered throughout. Considers aesthetic, cultural and ethical implications of mediating reality.

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 or node/script-based VR platforms.

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%
  • Individual 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:

● Basic programming skills, as documented through IAT806 or equivalent demonstration or documentation of basic programming competency (or instructor permission).
● Basic research methods skills, as documented through having taking a graduate research methods course (e.g., IAT 801, 802, 803, 834), or instructor permission.

 

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Readings, video tutorials/presentation, 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 evolves.

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.

Graduate Studies Notes:

Important dates and deadlines for graduate students are found here: http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/current/important_dates/guidelines.html. The deadline to drop a course with a 100% refund is the end of week 2. The deadline to drop with no notation on your transcript is the end of week 3.

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.