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Technical Communication Quarterly
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/htcq20
“I Feel Like I’m in a Box”: Contrasting Virtual
Reality “Imaginaries” in the Context of Academic
Innovation Labs
Brent Lucia, Matthew A. Vetter & David A. Solberg
To cite this article: Brent Lucia, Matthew A. Vetter & David A. Solberg (2023): “I Feel Like I’m in
a Box”: Contrasting Virtual Reality “Imaginaries” in the Context of Academic Innovation Labs,
Technical Communication Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/10572252.2023.2245442
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2023.2245442
Published online: 10 Aug 2023.
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“I Feel Like I’m in a Box”: Contrasting Virtual Reality “Imaginaries” in
the Context of Academic Innovation Labs
Brent Lucia
a
, Matthew A. Vetter
b
, and David A. Solberg
c
a
University of Connecticut;
b
Indiana University of Pennsylvania;
c
Holy Family Institute
ABSTRACT
As immersive technology grows in popularity, universities are developing
academic innovation labs (AIL) that often introduce students to virtual reality
(VR) and other emerging cross reality applications. Although these labs help
educate students on emerging technology, a more critical eye is needed to
examine user experience (UX). This article reports on a qualitative, multi-
method study that employed a talk-aloud UX protocol to gather data on VR
users’ experience at the University of Connecticut’s OPIM Research Lab. To
fully dene and contrast this data, we juxtapose these individual narratives
with rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform
HTC Vive, Google’s VR application Tilt Brush, and the Research Lab’s promo-
tional material. Based on our ndings, we assert that sociotechnical imagin-
aries as constructed by promotional material often reduce the complexities
of immersion in user experience. Such marketing rhetoric creates “top-down”
imaginaries that contrast with “bottom-up” imaginaries generated in user
experience, reinforcing the complex and uid denitions of immersion. The
resulting study has practical implications for stakeholders across higher
education, especially in the context of innovation labs, as well as for technical
and professional communication educators and practitioners.
KEYWORDS
Immersive technology;
innovation labs; virtual
reality; immersion; user
experience; emerging
technology; future
imaginaries; sociotechnical
imaginaries
In the past decade, immersive technologies such as XR (or “cross reality”) technology has enhanced its
offerings, becoming both more accessible and widely adopted by various audiences and users. Virtual
reality (VR) in particular is advancing at a furious pace as prices plummet due to cheaper hardware
and gaming software (Greengard, 2019). In August 2018, Sony reported that it had sold 3 million VR
Headsets and 21.9 million games and experiences (Greengard, 2019). More recently, Facebook
announced that it will rebrand its corporate hierarchy into Meta and focus research and development
on building the metaverse, increasing investment in immersive technologies (“Introducing Meta,,”
2021). Over the next decade and beyond, immersive technology will change countless tasks, processes,
and industries, dramatically altering interactions between people and allowing them to feel present
when they are physically separate (Greengard, 2019). Although the gaming industry will most likely
remain the primary introduction to virtual reality applications, higher education will also play
a significant role. Technical communicators have already recognized this shift, locating the challenges
VR presents to rhetorical elements such as audience analysis and invention (Miles, 2009). This article
explores cross reality and VR under the umbrella term immersive technology, which refers to the vast
domain of embodied technologies that are not just about physical objects that extend human capacity
but also software applications that create augmented simulations for more seamless, experiences in
human-technology interactions (Tham, Duin, et al., 2018).
College students are being introduced to these new technologies through academic innovation labs
(AIL), new spaces at universities created for experimentation. In fact, more than 200 institutions now
CONTACT Brent Lucia brent.lucia@uconn.edu School of Business, The University of Connecticut, rm 216, 2100 Hillside Road,
Storrs, CT 06269, USA
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2023.2245442
© 2023 Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
have a “chief innovation officer” and another 200 have “online learning roles that are connected to
broader academic innovation efforts” (Salisbury & Crews, 2019). Although the use of the term has
been applied to the public sector in the context of entrepreneurial initiatives (Tonurist et al., 2015),
higher education institutions are also increasingly founding such centers, especially as multidisciplin-
ary efforts to mediate collaboration between STEM, emerging technology, and business (Van Goolen
et al., 2014). The use of academic innovation labs is meant to represent a growing trend in higher
education toward the founding of institutes, makerspaces and digital innovation labs dedicated to
introducing students to new and emerging technologies, as well as providing space and resources for
exploration, research, and application for a variety of fields. One example of these kinds of labs can be
found at the University of Connecticut’s Operations and Information Management (OPIM) Gladstein
Research Lab, where students learn about the practical applications of immersive technologies.
Although these sites may be successfully preparing students to use these technologies according to
industry needs, a more critical eye is needed to fully investigate the experience of VR users, and their
experience of immersion.
Communication scholars have acknowledged that VR is increasingly subject to corporate and
promotional rhetoric that positions the technology’s immersive experience as achieving revolutionary
and even impossible aims. Recent special issues (in journals New Media and Society and Social Studies
of Science) have focused on “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Mager & Katzenbach, 2021; Sismondo, 2020)
as productive heuristics for analyzing such positionings, as well as other discourses of emerging
technologies. As first defined by Jasanoff and Kim (2009), sociotechnical imaginaries are “collectively
imagined forms of social life and social order,” which reflect the design and goals of powerful
organizations, companies, or governments (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, p. 120). Corporate versions of
these imaginaries often take up terms like immersion to deflect or amplify future visions that support
the corporate mission; for example, Meta consistently amplifies the benefits of an immersive experi-
ence while downplaying the lack of regulatory protections (Rosenberg, 2022). Since the initial con-
ceptualization of the term, others have recognized how the monolithic picture of sociotechnical
(sometimes referred to as “future”) imaginaries has proven to be limiting. There are always multiple
imaginaries in circulation that are more or less powerful, that are “contested, changeable, flexible and
loose around the edges” (Sismondo, 2020). Given the growing attention to ethics in TPC (Fiesler
et al., 2020), technical communicators need to keep a critical eye on how future imaginaries concern-
ing the false promises of immersion influence their audiences, especially within higher education,
improving their awareness of how those with power and special interests shape public discourse.
Indeed, TPC scholars have advocated for stronger academic-industry relationships in technical
communication, much like other disciplines where professionals depend on academic research to
improve their practice; however, academics have arguably learned more from the industry than the
other way around (Bridgeford & Amant, 2017). TPC scholars’ involvement is therefore crucial for the
development and humanistic mission of new technologies, particularly in a society that increasingly
relies on media to discover how technology is shaped (Knievel, 2006).
To investigate these false promises, we examine contrasting imaginaries that reframe the concept of
immersion in VR applications. Comparative analysis aids in identification of “the types of futures that
resonate in shaping [UX] technology” (Liao & Iliadis, 2021, p. 260). It also allows for distinction
between types or “levels” of future imaginaries, of which Liao and Iliadis (2021), adopting Geels (2002)
multilevel perspective for understanding the evolution of sociotechnical regimes, define three: “macro-
level futures that form socio-technical landscapes, meso-level discourses that form particular socio-
technical regimes, and micro-level futures that are generated by individual niche innovations” (p. 260).
Although we do not fully engage the multilevel perspective, we value Liao and Iliadis (2021) project of
tracing multiplicities of future imaginaries as crucial to the momentum of this line of inquiry. In
particular, we engage levels of future discourses to understand how corporate sociotechnical imagin-
aries operate on a “top-down” scale, often envisioning a technology that will liberate the user and
enhance bodily experience, implying a sense of imminence through immersion (Berkhout et al., 2004).
At another end of the spectrum are “bottom-up” discourses that we connect to individuals’ user
2B. LUCIA ET AL.
experience. Analyzing bottom-up discourses that emerge in individual UX helps to identify
a diverging set of sociotechnical imaginaries. Such divergence is most evident in our identification
of three facets of the immersive experience. We also seek to define another category of user experience,
where immersion breaks down or does not happen at all, as a significant challenge to the optimistic
imaginaries presented in corporate marketing.
Therefore, we compare two datasets: 1) “bottom-up” imaginaries gathered from qualitative data
through VR users at UConn’s OPIM Gladstein Research Lab and 2) “top-down” imaginaries consist-
ing of textual analysis of corporate marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform HTC Vive,
Google’s VR application Tilt Brush, and the AIL. Identifying and classifying categories of immersion
and nonimmersion ultimately demonstrates the range of diverse user experience in VR. Our data at
times confirm certain ideologies related to “top-down” imaginaries emerging in marketing; more
often, however, the qualitative UX data complicate and challenge what might be seen as reductive and
techno-optimistic sociotechnical imaginaries. Attending to these contrasting imaginaries can help
technical communicators reflect on how they wish to prepare themselves and students looking to work
with emerging technology. More specifically, we argue that educators should be aware of the
divergence between students’ user experience with UX and popular narratives surrounding these
technologies to better develop and market these tools in innovation labs.
Technical communication and XR immersion
TPC students can benefit from an exposure to VR technologies, whereby VR immersion provides
students a deeper understanding of course content and a preview of future, immersive workplaces. As
immersive technologies continue to evolve, technical communication has matured into an innovative
and expansive profession, and technical communication scholars must do more than simply translate
technical information; they must learn to solve problems through communication and material
resources (Kimball, 2017a; J. C. K. Tham, 2021). Despite this growth, there have been mixed reviews
from both popular and scholarly sources regarding the viability of these new, emerging technologies
(Tham, McGrath, et al., 2018). In a special issue of Computers and Composition, Tham, McGrath, et al.
(2018) argue that although immersive technologies such as VR have expanded into a million-dollar
industry, what these technologies lack are “reliable and reputable models” that help provide pedago-
gical deployments for these emerging technologies (Tham, McGrath, et al., 2018, p. 179). Technical
communicators serve an important role in developing immersive communication that looks beyond
technical principles and develops rhetorically accurate, and ethical, messaging that promotes the best
user experience (J. C. K. Tham, 2018). Indeed, technical communication scholars must serve as
advocates who keep watch on ethical issues within these emerging technologies (Sun & Getto, 2017).
Ethical concerns come into play for TPC scholars when considering the descriptions of user
experience – particularly regarding immersion – and how they are framed and taken up by those
with power and specific interests. As Liao (2015) has noted about the AR industry, there is a tight
coupling of marketing and the AR industry that can influence and shift the priorities of early
companies, and the elements of this relationship are constantly changing as the industry changes.
Although advertising for immersive technology is still in its infancy, certain scholars have already
predicted how marketing companies will exploit user experience through misleading experience
marketing, inducing artificial emotions in customers, and distorting reality (Mhaidli & Schaub,
2021). It is important to explore these early development stages of emerging technology because
these moments are when essential meanings get assigned to technologies (Liao, 2015).
As it stands, user experience is still largely defined and influenced by corporate entities that establish
sociotechnical imaginaries for emerging technologies, providing technical and professional communicators
a top-down understanding of terms such as immersion. These “top-down” discourses promote the alluring,
reality-shifting aspects of technology to sensationalize and manifest a future still largely speculative
(Pedersen, 2013). In doing so, terms like immersion become simplified and fail to indicate their flexible
and often contested definitions, because scholars in different fields deploy varying terms to refer to
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY 3
immersion in mediated environments (Lee, 2004). This simplification can lead to blatant misconceptions;
for example, enhancing immersion through continued improvement of the technology does not, as the
industry claims, necessarily increase users’ sense of engagement and cannot be measured in terms of media
design or manufacturer’s intentions (Shin, 2019). How immersion arises during user experience has also
been debated. Some scholars argue immersion resides in the user’s perspective and previous experience
(Shin, 2019), while others have asserted that individuals’ idiosyncrasies in cognition and perception play
a major role in immersion (Li et al., 2020). Others suggest that situational contexts (Shin, 2018), social
presence (Grinberg et al., 2014) or users’ movement (Chan, 2018) are crucial to immersion. Immersion is,
therefore, conceptually ambiguous; its role within the context of XR and TPC has yet to be fully established,
and its uptake in corporate marketing imaginaries further exacerbates this issue.
As we consider definitions of immersion that circulate within top-down, corporate imaginaries, we
note the importance for technical communicators to pay attention to new user experience in the age of
immersive media and connected technologies (J. C. K. Tham, 2018). In doing so, we can begin to
understand a more complex and contested set of imaginaries, one that presents a challenge to top-down
narratives that circulate within AILs and that, by virtue of their own commodification and mass
circulation in media, have become more powerful (Kitalong, 2000). Indeed, user content has been
argued to enrich technical communication for emerging technologies as a response to the limitations in
information on products in the VR space (Calbay, 2019). User experiences outside standard corporate
practices draw important insights from users’ participation in “bottom-up knowledge value creation
about technology” (Calbay, 2019, p. 58). When it comes to new immersive products, technical commu-
nication does not have to be seen as the exclusive domain of companies seeking to control messages but
may also come from individuals who do not have a corporate agenda (Calbay, 2019; Kimball, 2017b).
Educational spaces, particularly innovation labs, must be more formally examined with a critical eye that
looks toward the rhetoric of top-down imaginaries, on the one hand, and user experience (bottom-up)
on the other, acknowledging that immersive technology can function with the human in complex ways.
This article juxtaposes rhetorical analysis of “top-down” marketing discourse of HTC Vive, Tilt Brush,
and the Gladstein Research Lab, as an exemplary AIL, with qualitative data related to participants’ UX
(“bottom-up” imaginaries). By contrasting marketing rhetoric with UX data, we ultimately argue for a more
nuanced and humanistic understanding of VR experience within AILs, one that acknowledges how
technology companies’ discursive framings of “the future” reveal the logics and biases of big tech companies,
but also asserts that imaginaries are “futures in the making, things in which we can actively intervene”
(Egliston & Carter, 2022). Our findings ultimately demonstrate that although marketing rhetoric may gain
more traction in shaping UX, it is also consistently challenged by individual and subjective user experience.
Materials and methods
Research site
UX data for this study was gathered at the University of Connecticut’s Student Union Hall in the
spring of 2020, with hardware and software provided by UConn’s Operations and Information
Management (OPIM) Gladstein Research Lab. The OPIM Lab offers three different avenues for
experimentation: developing projects by working through the principles of design thinking, attending
workshops held by professionals working with emerging technologies, or focusing with a specific
technology through a series of learning activities. The Lab offers VR “Tech Kits” that include card-
board headsets, View-Master and Cynoculars VR, and HTC Vive.
HTC Vive
The HTC Vive is a VR headset created jointly by the HTC and Valve corporations. Valve began testing
VR headset prototypes as early as 2014 and made public their partnership with Steam – the online
4B. LUCIA ET AL.
gaming platform-one year later (McCormick, 2014, 2015). The original model of the Vive was released
to consumers on April 5, 2016.
The “goggle section” of the headset protrudes several inches, blocking out ambient light unless one
is looking directly down one’s nose (Robertson, 2016, 0:44–0:48). The user looks into the goggles at
two screens with a resolution of 1080 × 1200 pixels. In addition to the headset comes two handheld,
wireless controllers “shaped like cupholders on sticks” (Robertson, 2016). Two small towers that, when
placed apart from each other in a room, scan the intervening space with lasers for the movement of the
user and cover an area of fifteen-by-fifteen feet. This scanning sets up digital boundaries that alert the
user if they get too close to a wall or other obstruction (Robertson, 2016).
Tilt Brush
Tilt Brush is a VR application that allows users to paint in three-dimensional space, thereby creating
a sculptural painting. Developed by design studio Skillman and Hackett in 2014, Tilt Brush – along
with the firm that designed it – was acquired by Google in April 2015 and first released on April 5,
2016 for HTC Vive (Crunchbase, n.d..).
Users of Tilt Brush are immersed in a virtual space commensurate with the size of a small room –
although the background art gives one the sense of being in a vast landscape. Once the user puts on the
Vive headset, they enter the default environment that has some objects and ambience of a dark forest. In
their nondominant hand, they hold a controller that the VR displays as revolving “palettes:” these show
options for tools (e.g., a straightedge or eyedropper), options for brushes (including elements like stars,
fire, rainbows, and electric currents, as well as standard paint brushes or markers), and on the final
palette, a wide selection of colors. With the dominant hand, the user holds the controller that serves as
a brush (and a cursor for clicking on palette options). As a VR app, Tilt Brush allows users to walk
around, under, or within their paintings (Ungerleider, “Drawing and Painting,” Ungerleider, 2016).
Methods for rhetorical analysis of marketing media
To examine the top-down imaginaries displayed in marketing media and how these inform users’
understanding and experience with VR, each author rhetorically analyzed marketing media artifacts
related to both HTC Vive and Tilt Brush, as well as promotional media from the OPIM Gladstein
Research Lab. The data analyzed for this element of our research included several pages of websites for
both HTC Vive and Tilt Brush (Figures 1 and 2), as well as promotional language for the OPIM Lab.
Our analysis was primarily motivated to “make salient” the assumptions of the marketing rhetoric
accompanying these technologies (Pedersen, 2013) and contrast them with UX data. Our methods
follow the claim laid out by Liao and Iliadis (2021) that examining how multiple types of future
imaginaries interact helps establish and define their interrelationships (p. 259).
Methods for qualitative UX research
To obtain the “bottom-up,” qualitative data, this study utilized a talk-aloud protocol to gather first-
hand data related to participants’ experience of immersion in the VR environment Tilt Brush. Based
on Foxman et al. 2022 call for more multidisciplinary perspectives, we intentionally sought to move
away from quantitative approaches to provide insights from a rhetorical lens. Although this approach
does not use common statistical models (e.g., Witmer & Singer, 1998), it does allow for in-depth
exploration of user’s experiences during the actual VR event. As Slater et al. (2003) have argued,
“presence questionnaires are administered after the event and so cannot reflect the changing state of
the participant during the ongoing experience” (n.p.). Because the research protocol involved in-
depth, talk-aloud interviews related to participants’ experience with the technology, as well as
increased time for technology set-up, participants were limited to a smaller number (n = 4) in this
study. Talk-aloud methods, which first gained popularity in cognitive movements during the 1980s
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY 5
and 90s (Ericsson & Simon, 1993), have recently been shown to be effective for gathering qualitative
data related to user experience (Hatter & Howard, 2013; St.; Amant, 2021).
As part of a VR promotion for OPIM Gladstein Research Lab, random participants were drawn
from the University’s undergraduate student body and were allowed to test various VR equipment,
including HTC Vive and Tilt Brush. The promotion event lasted approximately four hours, and as
participants tested the equipment and became comfortable within the HTC Vive, they were prompted
with five questions related to their experience. The talk-aloud protocol is similar to a think-aloud
method in that participants are encouraged to verbalize a phenomenon concurrently (or as the
phenomenon takes place) to avoid subsequent interpretation by the participant (Van Someren et al.,
1994). However, talk-aloud protocols differ from think-aloud in that they may include verbal prompts
Figure 1. Screenshot of HTC Vive’s website in Sept. 2016 via Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20160916091521/http://
www.vive.com/us/.
Figure 2. A screenshot from the front page of the Tilt Brush website, captured March 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/
20210328133123/https://www.tiltbrush.com/.
6B. LUCIA ET AL.
or questions from the researcher, whereas think-aloud protocols typically have the participant
verbalize thought processes (without prompting) as they complete a task (Ericsson & Simon, 1993).
As part of the talk-aloud protocol, participants were prompted to verbalize responses to the following
questions as they explored HTC Vive and Tilt Brush:
(1) As you begin to get comfortable in the VR, tell me a little bit about your sense of self in this
environment.
(2) What about your sense of your own body or presence within the VR environment?
(3) As you continue to interact in the VR environment, please describe your experience with or
perception of place within the VR environment.
(4) Give me three adjectives to describe your sense of place in the VR environment.
(5) What about your sense of the physical room (HUB or LAB) during your VR experience? How
would you describe your awareness of these surroundings when you are experiencing the VR
environment?
Throughout this procedure participants were encouraged to vocalize whatever comes to mind,
whether it is a feeling, sense, association, or more cogent interpretation of their experience. In this
way, we sought out an effective or sensory report from participants. Our analytical process was
deliberately inductive, utilizing in vivo participant data to create codes. With these initial codes, we
then consulted previous research to search for alignment with concepts related to immersion, includ-
ing action/flow (Weibel & Wissmath, 2011), emotion (Baños et al., 2004), and presence (Slater &
Steed, 2000; Weibel et al., 2008).
Results
Rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse
Our examination of multiple marketing artifacts reveals rhetoric related to liberation, imminence,
enhancement, and unbroken experience of the VR environment. We focus this rhetorical analysis at
three sites (HTC Vive, Tilt Brush, and OPIM Innovate Lab) to more fully explore how marketing
discourse might both influence and contradict actual UX.
The rhetoric of HTC Vive
Vive’s website, as archived in 2016, suggests a reality that liberates users from their restrictive
imaginations. The main slide notes: “THIS IS REAL/Discover virtual reality beyond imagination”
(“Vive,,” 2016). Another references the possibilities of VR in the initial content bundle: “Experience
a mysterious adventure. Paint in 3-D. Prepare for the zombie apocalypse” (“Vive,,” 2016). The
language used here suggests that emerging technology offers the user avenues for escapism, promoting
unbounded freedom while promising an even more physically liberating future. At the same time, the
language seems reductive, noting design values that obscure dehumanizing consequences, while
contributing to a mythical language of and faith in technological progress (Pedersen, 2013).
Vive’s marketing lingo is at once conservative and colloquial: “Everyone gets blown away by the
Vive experience. You should be next! Stop by one of our tour locations to try Vive. You’ll get to play
around with crazy-cool virtual reality games and chat with other HTC aficionados. Believe the hype,
get excited and see for yourself what the tech world’s raging about” (“Vive,,” 2016). The rhetoric here
consists of absolutes and extremes (e.g. “everyone gets blown away,” “crazy-cool”), a normative
statement (“you should be next”), a promise of community, and several imperatives (“Stop by,”
“Believe the hype,” and “get excited”). One formal advertisement from HTC, from March 2016,
consists mostly of video clips of the VR experience. At the end are some spoken words: “A new era
of reality has arrived. Experience the freedom of VR without boundaries.” (HTC, The Vive Virtual
Reality System 1:09–1:19). The language seems to have two intentions: 1) to excite the consumer by
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY 7
presaging the dawn of a new age of technology (techno-optimism) and 2) to promise a feeling of
liberation.
The optimistic tone coupled with phrases emphasizing human inspiration are ways that this
language forwards a sense of techno-optimism. For the Vive Cosmos (the now standard version),
there is some brief description of the experience: “Dive into your creative space, immerse yourself in
exciting worlds, and discover new ways to learn and stay active” (Vive, 2016). Creativity and a form of
escapism are advertised, motivating the user toward the notion of liberation (“exciting worlds”) and
enhancement (“new ways of learning”) that push bold and hyperbolic futures often associated with
emerging technologies (Liao & Iliadis, 2021, p. 261). Although different to some degree, these futures
hope to establish a “top-down” set of expectations for the VR community.
The rhetoric of Tilt Brush
Google’s current website (refer to Figure 2) for Tilt Brush has the headline: “Painting from a new
perspective” (“Tilt Brush,,” 2021). Following that advertisement are a few other statements: “Tilt Brush
lets you paint in 3-D space with virtual reality./Your room is your canvas./Your palette is your
imagination./The possibilities are endless” (“Tilt Brush,,” 2021). These statements suggest that tech-
nology ought to be sensual, enhancing one’s vital functions (Pedersen, 2013, p. 33). Below these leads,
another header appears: “Experience painting as you have never before” (“Tilt Brush,,” 2021). A few
main features of the application are also described in captions alongside video thumbnails: “From ink
and smoke to snow and fire, discover the wonders of a virtual palette;” “Intuitive interface/Doodler or
expert: unleash your creativity in no time;” and “Poly integration/upload your creations to the web and
explore art from a new perspective with Poly” (“Tilt Brush,,” 2021). Phrases like the “wonders of the
virtual palette” promote enhancements to people’s natural, creative functions while indicating the
efficiency and effectiveness of such hardware. The integration between the human body and this
technology regularly suggests such motives, projecting them as “plausible, logical and imminent”
(Pedersen, 2013, p. 33).
Other language on the website (“Experience painting as you have never before”) invites the user in
with the promise of novelty—a new medium of art. Once the reader’s attention has been caught by that
first general statement, next comes the objective description of what Tilt Brush is: “painting in 3-D.”
The next two sentences (“Your palette is your imagination”/“The possibilities are endless”) emphasize
and frame an expectation of freedom and lack of limitations (“Tilt Brush,,” 2021).
The first caption about the features (“Dynamic brushes”) is written to entice the potential user with
the fantastic possibilities of the digital materials and tools. This language markets the technicality of the
application – what it can do in the buyer’s hands. The next caption seeks to reassure the reader of the
app’s user-friendly quality. It leads with the words: “Intuitive interface.” This aspect might be called
the facility of the application, that is, its ease of use. The purpose of the language is to encourage and
validate; you do not need to be Picasso to have fun with Tilt Brush. Finally, the third caption advertises
the option for users to share their finished products on the Internet via another site called Poly,
a library for many Tilt Brush works. This aspect welcomes the Tilt Brush artist into a community of
other creators online. The language acknowledges the human need for community and welcomes
a variety of skilled users, forwarding this notion of creative enhancement.
The rhetoric of the OPIM innovate lab
On the OPIM Lab’s website, VR imaginaries are presented as both a utility and source of liberation,
aligning with this sense of techno-optimism seen in the marketing discourse. A promotional video on
the website describes the HTC Vive as one of the more “high end VR headsets” at the lab that allows
students to be “fully immersed within any sort of environment they want” (UConn, 2017). The video
states that the HTC Vive provides educational experiences, games and the opportunity for students’
“to develop new things” (UCon, 2017). The student in the video argues that experiencing HTC Vive at
the OPIM Lab is like the excitement one feels when seeing this technology depicted in the media: “you
see virtual reality on TV, you see the big headsets and the people playing with controllers. And here,
8B. LUCIA ET AL.
right in the lab, you can do that yourself” (UConn, 2017). The video ends with the student arguing that
using these technologies has allowed him to grow his skillset to new levels (UConn, 2017). The student
makes a direct connection from VR’s marketing language on television to the user’s experience at the
lab, indicating that what students believed was possible has now arrived on their college campus. The
notion of imminence is often used to articulate a future where emerging technology is not only
accepted but ubiquitous while shielding its readers from a more critical interpretation. The website
and video capture the audience’s desire for escapism and digital enhancement, while still pointing the
audience to HTC Vive’s practical applications. HTC Vive functions as both an educational tool and an
object of desire, creating a space where students can enhance their “skillsets” and partake in the
pleasurable experience they perceive users having in popular media.
Qualitative UX data
To analyze the qualitative data related to participant user experience of the HTC Vive and Tilt Brush
software gathered at the Student Union Hall, we first transcribed audio recordings of the talk-aloud
protocol using software Otter AI, then edited these transcripts to an “intelligent verbatim” level of
linguistic accuracy. In total, five separate audio files were used to create a single master document that
included transcripts from the talk-aloud data collection. This master document was then imported
into Taguette, a “free and open-source qualitative research tool” that enables cloud-based and
collaborative qualitative coding. Using Taguette, the three coauthors coded participant responses
using a simple in vivo, thematic analysis method (Saldaña, 2009). By working through the data
together, we consolidated initial codes into the following four major themes, noticing the various
elements that may help construct immersion as described in our analysis section: 1) Immersion
(Presence, Embodiment); 2) Immersion (Emotion, Affect); 3) Immersion (Action, Flow); 4) Non-
Immersion (Incongruence). Explication and analysis of these themes enable two major contributions.
First, and building on previous scholarship related to presence and immersion (Baños et al., 2004;
Bovet et al., 2018; IJsselsteijn et al., 2001; Kilteni et al., 2012; Slater & Steed, 2000; Weibel & Wissmath,
2011; Weibel et al., 2008), we define three distinct facets of the experience of immersion and one facet
of the experience of nonimmersion. Second, we demonstrate how actual UX of participants, refer-
enced here as bottom-up imaginaries, can complicate the reductive portrayals of VR imaginaries
found in marketing rhetoric. Our findings, as they relate to this second goal, at times both confirm and
complicate future imaginaries associated with marketing discourse.
Immersion (presence/embodiment)
Weibel et al. (2008) articulates presence as “a subjective feeling of immersion into a virtual environ-
ment” (p. 2275). In our conceptualization of the presence and/or embodiment of immersion, we
synthesize IJsselsteijn’s et al. (2001) theorization of spatial presence with Slater and Wilbur’s (1997)
articulation of presence as the “sense of being in the virtual environment” (p. 604). We furthermore
recognize the relevance of Slater and Steed’s (2000) linkage of body movement with presence. UX data
from participants in this study resonates strongly with psychological aspects of presence and embodi-
ment. Participants express an understanding of “a totally different space” that “feels endless,” and even
“magical.” Common responses include a negation of the physical environment as beyond the VR
environment, especially as they are engaged in the interaction with the Tilt Brush application:
[I] haven’t really thought about [the physical room] because I’m too consumed with making stuff here, but it feels
like I’m not really at UConn in the Student Union in room 310.
But it feels like I’m in a totally different space. If I start walking around, I don’t really know exactly where I am.
I don’t really know what’s going on in the rest of the world
No. I feel like a ghost, or invisible, because I can walk through everything, or what I’m painting – I can just walk
through it or see it from behind. It gives you a new perspective. So, I don’t feel like I’m here, if that makes sense.
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY 9
The common expressions among participants about presence, especially the idea of a separation from
the rest of the world – “new perspective,” or “magical” and “totally different space” – clearly aligns with
marketing language, especially in terms of the theme of “liberation.” At the same time, the unique ways
that participants share perceptions of the virtual environment also complicate “top-down” narratives
regarding VR.
As it relates to facets of presence and embodiment in contributing to immersion, much of our data
demonstrates participants’ experience with action or interaction as virtually evocative and construc-
tive. As one participant vocalizes: “I think the place is more my [brain?] and my imagination, which
was done in a creative drawing space, so I can do whatever I want.” Such a characterization anticipates
our third category of immersion focused on action or flow.
Immersion (emotion/affect)
Although emotion has not been a common factor in measuring immersive presence in VR environ-
ments, our data revealed significant emphasis on emotion or affect. Baños et al. (2004) argue that
affective content can increase VR participants’ sense of immersion across different media platforms.
Quoting Ijjselsteijn, Baños et al. (2004) emphasize that “the basic appeal of media still lies in its
content, the storyline, the ideas and emotions that are being communicated” (p. 739). We agree with
Baños et al. (2004) that because “emotions play an important role in our subjective judgments and
automatic responses,” they also impact the experience of immersion (p. 735).
Participants’ UX of Tilt Brush responded to the affective or emotional facets of immersion,
particularly in constructing feelings related to calm, peace, and intellectual agency. One of the more
common themes in this category articulates feelings of peacefulness or the “calming” atmosphere. As
one participant voiced, “I like this experience. I like being in the room, especially knowing that I feel
like I’m [doing this all by] myself, especially in that the artwork is very calming.” Another also
emphasized how “It’s a very calm place to be in.” Other affective statements emphasized responses
related to intelligence: “I feel kind of. . .smart” and despite feeling “disconnected a little . . . .more free-
thinking.” At least three participants referenced video games and films such as The Avengers, with one
participant even voicing that they “felt like a videogame character.” Although we would suggest that
feelings related to peace and/or calm can certainly be attributed to the content of the Tilt Brush
application, the second set of emotions might help us understand how users feel cognitively empow-
ered by the VR environment itself.
The range of responses that help us understand the affective component of immersion also
demonstrates how rhetorical motives located in marketing rhetoric for HTC Vive and Tilt Brush
are both present and absent in users’ descriptions of their experience. Participants’ descriptions of
feeling “smarter,” “free-thinking,” or even feeling “like a video game character” easily map onto larger
futures related to VR and its capacity for human enhancement, making us, somehow, more than
human. At the same time, repeated expressions related to feeling “peaceful,” or “calm” are a departure
from these top-down imaginaries. VR, as we are told, is a mind-blowing experience. Tilt Brush is
creativity-enhancing, allowing us to unlock new creative agencies. The emotion of feeling at peace
complicates and extends new subjectivities into VR experience.
Immersion (action/flow)
Our identification of participants’ UX of action or “flow” draws from work by Weibel and
Wissmath (2011) involving UX in online video game play. Weibel and Wissmath (2011) summar-
ize the characteristics of flow as “intense involvement, clarity of goals and feedback, concentrating
and focusing, lack of self-consciousness, distorted sense of time, balance between the challenge and
the skills required to meet it, and. . .the feeling of full control over the activity” (p. 2277). This final
description of “full control over the activity” also led us to the understanding of this facet of
immersion as corresponding to a user’s experience of action or movement in the VR environment.
Although Kilteni et al. (2012) have conceptualized “the motion of the participant. . .mapped to the
virtual body” as critical to a user’s sense of immersive agency (p. 383), we have deliberately
10 B. LUCIA ET AL.
refrained from using the term agency, given its many mixed theoretical lineages across disciplines.
However, we do agree that a type of virtual/physical correspondence, in terms of activity and
movement, informs this facet of immersion. As participants explored the VR environment within
Tilt Brush, their sense of immersion seemed to be enacted or constrained through their engage-
ment with the tools provided by the application. For many respondents, interacting with these
tools provided a sense of freedom and/or creative agency, as demonstrated in the following data
selections:
Basically, it’s like 3-D painting and it gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want. But all that freedom
makes it hard to choose what to do, so, I’m kind of just doing the same thing over and over again. It might not be
but yeah, it gives you a lot of freedom and it makes you feel boundless.
I feel like I’m acting like myself. I feel like I have more freedom to do whatever because I literally could, paint
whatever, create whatever.
As I was playing around with the art stuff I really like to erase—I can actually go and [inaudible], which I thought
was weird, because at first I was wondering, why all the paint was right in front of me, and then I extended my
arm, which makes me understand that I can move.
Participants felt a freedom to interact with paint brushes and other tools in the VR environment,
but it was through that interaction that they began to perceive immersion, further substantiating
the significance of flow when it comes to creating the immersive experience. For instance, the
participant represented in the previous data point describes how the act of extending an arm to
erase helps them understand the ability to move. Participant emphasis on freedom and creativity,
additionally, further demonstrates how the top-down, marketing rhetorics of both the technol-
ogy and software (which is painting software, after all) are taken up in descriptions of user
experience.
Nonimmersion (incongruence)
In contrast to the research discussing how hardware/software glitches cause disruptions in the
immersive experience (Bovet et al., 2018; Slater & Steed, 2000), our dataset demonstrates that there
are certain immersion-disrupting factors that have nothing to do with hardware. Slater and Steed
(2000) also mention such external factors. For example, participants feel their feet on the floor; they are
aware that they are in a room, and within that room, in a “box” demarcated by sensors; they are
concerned about stumbling into objects. Moreover, because there was no sound in the Tilt Brush
application, participants could hear voices in the physical room. Additionally, the sense of body may
not align with the virtual body presented in the VR, and there may be a psychological resistance to
being in the virtual space.
Awareness of the physical environment outside the VR – the “real world” as participants sometimes
described it – often interrupted participants’ experience of immersion during the study:
I still feel like I’m in the real world right now. I still feel like I’m on the ground, I know where I am relative to the
room.
There’s no audio, so I hear everyone talking, which makes me know what’s going on in the room. I know, again,
I’m relatively in this little box that’s setup through the sensors. But other than that, I also know I’m on the floor,
because it’s just a headset and stuff. Mostly, I feel like I’m pretty connected with the room. I wouldn’t know if
people silently walk in or anything, or where you are, other than if you talk.
I kind of know there’s also boundaries, so I know where the sensors are. So, I know where, I guess.
I feel like I’m in a box. That’s what it looks like. Yeah, I was saying—I feel like you’re in a box. I feel like I’m not in
a regular room. I’m scared of bumping into things right now. I can’t tell where I am in your space.
Another participant described an awareness of the space outside the VR while the virtual world was
holding their attention. This separation might be thought of as a divided awareness: “I know I’m still in
the real world, but everything is just focused on this VR thing right now. . .Right now I’m drawing
TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY 11
a 3-D person.” In another case, a participant reported a piecemeal embodiment in the immersion –
meaning, some parts of the body were more immersed than others; this sensation may be compared to
the feeling of being partially submerged in water: “I think it’s more like two hands are almost not
connected to the VR as much but the whole body is not.” This phenomenon presumably derives from
the dynamics of the Tilt Brush application, where hands are the primary instruments of the
interaction.
Psychological unease may also disconnect the user from the VR experience. As one participant in
the protocol reported feeling “disoriented. . .I don’t know, it feels spacious, but like cognitive dis-
sonance. I feel like I know that I have space when I feel like I don’t. So, I guess, confusing. No, it’s nice.”
This feeling of disorientation may be caused by an incongruence in the sense of location, to use the
term from Kilteni et al. (2012), who cite a sense of location as one of the criteria in the sense of
embodiment. In this case, the participant had two different cognitive maps of the surroundings that
were coming into conflict. Such emotions or perceptions may contribute to an affective resistance to
using VR, which may lead to a lack of psychological investment and thus, a break in immersion.
Breakages in immersion significantly challenge the “top-down” imaginaries of HTC Vive and Tilt
Brush that attempt to convince prospective users of a seamless VR experience. In illustrating the highly
subjective ways users experience nonimmersion, we provide alternate bottom-up imaginaries to the
reductive rhetorics of technology offered by marketing discourse.
Discussion
This research showcases the interplay between “top-down” and “bottom-up” imaginaries by combin-
ing rhetorical analysis and qualitative user experience research methods. Marketing rhetoric often
promotes certain attitudes toward technology and immersion, engaging in techno-optimism regarding
VR’s capacity to enhance people’s creativity and intelligence while providing a liberating experience
that transports the user to a new and flawless virtual reality. Rhetorics established by academic
innovation labs (AILs) are easily attached to these larger imaginaries that circulate within the broader
VR discourse. However, as becomes evident in our analysis of the qualitative data, UX both departs
from and conforms to descriptions of immersion promoted in the “top-down” imaginaries seen in
marketing discourse. For some participants, their experience conforms to these “top-down” imagin-
aries that forward notions of liberation and creativity while obscuring the dehumanizing consequences
(Pedersen, 2013). Although she does not use terminology related to imaginaries, Pedersen’s (2013)
study of wearable technologies identifies the ways that mainstream discourses in advertising, film, and
other forms of mass media often anticipate and even predetermine the audience’s responses to and
understandings of emerging technologies. We also contend that the optimistic narratives that char-
acterize these discourses (marketing in this case) often reductively represent user experience.
In other participants’ contrasting descriptions of their experience, themes range from
nonimmersion, to the “peaceful” or “calming” aspect of immersion, providing a unique
“bottom-up” set of imaginaries from user experience. Our analysis of data related to the
“calming” effect of immersion especially conflicts with the marketing language. Overall, our
findings extend the work of Li et al. (2020) who have argued that immersion is a highly
subjective experience, which conflicts with corporate imaginaries. Immersion is also often
portrayed as a fluid experience, depending on these facets noted previously, and is at times
nonexistent, especially when users are aware they are in the physical world. Moreover, our
research locates the interplay of imaginaries at different levels in hopes of gaining a deeper
understanding of the VR environment used at AILs and how these futures get negotiated and
deployed (Liao & Iliadis, 2021, p. 280). Top-down marketing imaginaries fail to acknowledge
these breakages but suggest VR will act on the user to “immerse” them into the virtual.
Although dominant corporate imaginaries suggest a transformation into another world that is
relatively universal for all users, these obscure the subjective and reciprocal relationships when
the user engages the technology, the VR environment, and their embodied experience.
12 B. LUCIA ET AL.
Recommendations
As companies offer products and services of greater technological complexity, the need for
enhanced technical communication has increased within the workplace. However, more com-
plex technology can be especially difficult, costly, and time-consuming for technicians to
successfully operate on systems when their technical understanding of a procedure is limited
due to unclear information or a lack of instructions (Smith & Salmon, 2017). Virtual reality
(VR) training methodologies have the ability to transfer workers skills into the real world
more effectively than traditional training methods (Smith & Salmon, 2017).
Therefore, our study has practical implications for several stakeholders across higher education
and technical communication. First, academic innovation labs (AILs) that promote this emerging
technology should be aware of the divergence users experience from more popular VR narratives
and should situate their promotional materials toward more complex definitions of immersion, as
well as provide nuanced accounts of emerging technologies in general. Second, by employing both
rhetorical analysis and UX data in the form of talk-aloud interviews, we also provide
a comparative analytic for technical communication students and professionals to further under-
stand XR marketing and user experience. In doing so, we add to a growing body of literature that
recommends the combination of “conventional and unconventional evaluation methods” for
immersive environments (Kitalong et al., 2009, p. 162). Users bring their unique histories to the
VR experience, and these contribute to developing (or disconnecting from) an immersive
experience.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributors
Brent Lucia is an Assistant Professor In-Residence at the University of Connecticut School of Business. He has a PhD in
Composition and Applied Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His current research explores the
rhetorics of technology and its relationship to the production of space. His recent scholarship can be found in
Rhetoric Review, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, and Enculturation.
Matthew A. Vetter is an Associate Professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Composition and Applied Linguistics
PhD program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research, which asks questions related to technology, rhetoric,
and writing, has been published widely in venues such as Social Media and Society, Rhetoric Review, Studies in Higher
Education, and Computers and Composition. His co-authored book, Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality, was
published by Routledge in 2021.
David A. Solberg is a teaching assistant at the Holy Family Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his MA
degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His
master’s thesis was entitled The Use of Parallelism in Poetry Writing for the Acquisition of English Grammar (available
from ProQuest).
ORCID
Brent Lucia http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4666-8340
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