Heejung Kwon, & Andrew Hudson-Smith, “Escheresque Urban Design in Social VR World: A Multi-dimensional Navigation Structure for Connected Places, and Context,” Proceedings of Academic Design Management Conference 2022 pp. 455-467.

1. Escheresque Urban Design in Social VR World:
A Multi-Dimensional Navigation Structure for Connected Places, and Context
Heejung Kwon, Ph.D.
Information & Interaction Design, Underwood International College, Yonsei University
Andrew Hudson-Smith, Professor of Digital Urban Systems
The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL
Time : Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 1:30 -2:30 pm (EDT) Track 3 Session 3 [Social Value]
TORONTO
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset

2. Introduction
• The architecture of immersive cities: The space of creativity
−Pandemic Social Changes after the Covid-19 Pandemic
−New lifescapes in virtual worlds
−Infinite replication and reproduction system, which enables
collective production and distribution
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 2

3. Theoretical Background
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 3
Escheresque Design in Game World

4. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 4
Image courtesy Sotheby's.

5. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 5
Image courtesy Sotheby's.
Figure 11.
M. C. Escher, Convex
and Concave (1955)

6. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 6
Figure 1. (Left) Escher’s lithograph, Relativity (1953), and (Right) Escher inspired game world design, Monument Valley

7. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 7
Figure 2. The path a subject perceives they have taken in the virtual environment is shown in (a), while the path in physical space that the subject takes under
the different resetting methods is shown in (b) and (c). In this example, a person at position (0,0) in physical space views the virtual environment at position
(0,0). In (a), the person walks forward in the virtual environment where they are alerted by a signal at (4,0) indicating they are near the tracking limits and
need to reset their position in physical space. The person then continues walking to (12,0) in the virtual environment. The corresponding paths in the
physical environment for the three resetting methods are shown in (b) and (c). Red arrows indicate physical movement during a reset.

8. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 8
Figure 3. Components of the Redirected Walking Toolkit and how they are connected

9. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 9
Figure 4. The Redirected Viking Demo. User exploring a large Viking Village environment (bottom) in a physical tracked space of 7_7 meters(top).

10. Cognitive Notions of VR Spatial Design
• Two important aspects of VR spatial design in early VR
navigation studies
− Perceived spatial navigation
− Virtual locomotion of human agents
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 10

11. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 11

12. Retail Spaces in Metaverse
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 12

13. Research Framework
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 13
Space Syntax in Illusory Architecture

14. Space Syntax of Urban Collectiveness
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 14
“…There are relationships, then, between the formal
describability of space and how people use it. These elementary
relationships between the form of space and its use suggest
that the proper way to formulate the relation is to say that
space is given to us as a set of potentials and that we exploit
these potentials as individuals and collectivities in using space.
It is this that makes the relation between space and function
analysable and to some extent predictable.”
- Bill Hiller (1996)

15. VR Interface Elements for Urban Design
• Level 1 Space metaphor
• Level 2 Space syntax
• Level 3 Context as a canvas
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 15

16. VR Interface Elements for Urban Design
• Level 1 Space metaphor
−A space metaphor is an element of VR interfaces that inform
users what they can do, pursue, and achieve. In a shopping
experience, high street metaphors of constructions guide users
shopping interaction in virtual space. For example shopping
complex, complex paths, vendors, customer support utilities, and
events, often simulating shopping malls in the real world.
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 16

17. VR Interface Elements for Urban Design
• Level 2 Space syntax
− Space syntax is, arguably, a key element of wayfinding in virtual worlds.
Compared to the space metaphor, it does not only borrow the original
source of a metaphor, it invents a mechanism of VR navigation. The virtual
space adopts basic space syntaxes such as entries and junctions, while it
poses gestural and geographical shortcuts that enhance the VR shopping
experience. More and more digital urban design and planning will focus on
innovation of space syntax relating to improvement of spatial navigation
technology.
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 17

18. VR Interface Elements for Urban Design
• Level 3 Context as a canvas
− The context has formed in a temporal manner. Therefore, accumulative activities of
collective interactions define the identity of a space, and invite more creators, and
users to build the world. Building context itself is equivalent to building a world
where there is a pixel location, and its visual representations ground the value of
virtual artefacts. The notable difference of VR construction compared to real world
construction might be the collective activities, and feedback loops of context
formation in the virtual world is spontaneous and ephemeral, as it forms very fast,
and disappears very fast.
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 18

19. Research Method
• Case Study on Emerging Spatial
Interaction Design
−Single embedded case study
analysing VR retail structures of Vket:
The Character Market in VRChat
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 19
Vket 3
Vket 4
Vket 5

20. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 20
The architectural idea of virtual
shopping flow can be compared to
the Mobius stripe, an infinite
locomotion of body and cognition. It
extends the variety of choices, and
shortens the transits of avatars.
Figure 8. Janjaap Ruijssenaars' house design inspired by the Mobius strip

21. Data Collection and Analysis
• Longitudinal Case Study on VR Spatial Design
− The study followed 3 phases of the sequential evolution, Vket 3, Vket 4, and Vket 5
events.
− Level 1. Space Metaphor
• Commonly shared architectural conventions are entrance gates, navigational slopes
connecting the surrounding view of shopping spaces, portal assembly, teleporting diffusion,
store alignments, and vendor distribution.
− Level 2. Space Syntax
• The common visual and spatial languages have efficiently distributed marketing
communication messages and interactive shopping toolkits
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 21

22. Data Collection and Analysis
−Level 3. Context as a Cultural Canvas
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 22
Vket 5 Artist Concept Statement (or World View)
"Avatars" are your passport to the virtual world. Another important
part of you that represents your identity.
Virtual Showcase. A place flowing with avatars, accessories, and
costumes. Feel free to try them on. We’re sure that you’ll find “the
One”.
Virtual Showcase is a fashion mall traveling in the vast sky, and
many virtual goods are looking forward to meeting you here.

23. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 23

24. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 24
Figure 9. ATAKAMO Inworld Store in Vket

25. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 25
Figure 10. ATAKAMO webstore on the Vket Web.

26. Web 3.0 & the Road to Meta Commerce
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 26
“…the metaverse will potentially follow the growth of the World
Wide Web, which grew rapidly by linking together individual
hosted pages, which in terms of the metaverse will be the
introduction of a ‘platform’ linking together representations of
place and space.
- Andrew Hudson-Smith (2022)

27. About the Future
• New Market Value Chain
− The hodological aspect of metaverse spaces lures the transcendent thriving of meta commerce growth in a cross-channel mode
that links web, mobile, social network, intelligent mobility, and XR value chains.
• Social Valuation
− More and more physical domains will transform their values into digitally connected meanings, and relations. Therefore metaverse,
a digital space with an economic structure, and its profound social valuation from the surrogated identities, avatars will intertwine
the mesh of reality and unreality into the third space of human habitat.
• Meta Commerce Elites
− An ideal urban planner in future might presumably understand the dynamics between two discrete worlds, and will landscape
hybrid lifescapes of both the physical and the digital. In the prediction, we may easily imagine the urban planning activities will
hardly be dominated by a solo architect. It would be rather collectively mulled over in a participatory manner.
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 27

28. Conclusions
• Practical Implications
−The Values of Emotional and Hedonic Experiences in Social VR
−XR Usability
−Commercial and Psychological values of Social VR
• Safer and inclusive media supporting human Communication, and
interaction
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 28

29. Conclusions
• Theoretical Implications
−Space Syntax in Metaverse
−Spatial-Human Interaction Model in Connected places
−Transient notions from urban informatics to digital urban
system design
dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 29

30. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 30
Image courtesy Sotheby's.
The classic inspiration from
Escher’s Convex and Concave drew
the initial research ideas in the early
stage of our study, and the mental
travelling (Manguel & Guadalupi,
2001) motive in Social VR, the
collective imaginary world built by
participants.
Similar to how real world cities grow,
virtual life spaces and ultimately the
Metaverse will invite people into it,
initially via curiosity, and will thrive
subsequently by the ability to
unleash the incoming population’s
innovation, imagination, and
creativity (Hudson-Smith, 2022).

31. dmi: ADMC 2022 Design Management as a Strategic Asset 31
For More Information
https://www.facebook.com/IoT.UX/