Hello Explorer.

Welcome to the official blog of Texas Immersive Institute (TXI)! Here you will have the opportunity to dive into the ideas and opinions of our band of misfits. Our goal with this blog is to push the boundaries of audience research using emerging technologies; discover, share and design immersive storytelling as a vessel to provoke actionable change; and critically identify and consider how emerging technologies can improve our daily lives.

So allow me to introduce myself. I could call myself Chief Misfit but most just call me Erin for short, or Moxie if we connect in the metaverse. Officially, I’m a Professor and Founding Director of Texas Immersive Institute at Moody College of Communication, the University of Texas at Austin. I’ve been an educator, entrepreneur, experience design expert, and storyteller for over 25 years and the best part of starting Texas Immersive Institute is two things I love to do.

The first is Build Community. This is my special skill. Everyone has one and I’ve learned over time that I’m good at bringing people with diverse sets of skills together to play and make good trouble! I like to think that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development grounds my sense of open education as my stance towards building the right space for a community to flourish. I also would say that Paolo Friere has been an inspiration to recognize everyone in the room. TXI is a place for diverse talent and perspectives to flourish and for each individual to offer their critical perspective. Together, we spark curiosity and encourage all to play in the sandbox.

And the second-best part of sharing TXI with you is having a forum to discuss the design, development, and distribution of Immersive Experiences that blend the virtual and physical world to captivate people from all walks of life in exploring the possibilities of immersive. There are three crucial components that must be satisfied for an experience to be considered Immersive. First, the design must be intimate. A sincere and honest connection must be made with the audience through libraries worth of research that deeply understands the user’s pains, gains, wants, and needs. An experience must also be interactive such that the user feels they have a personal stake in the story being told. The story cannot move forward without their participation, and the user should be acutely aware that they are needed. Lastly, we require the design to integrate experiential elements so that the story feels real. Friction between the story’s reality and the user’s reality can break the engagement. If an experience truly satisfies these needs then an audience will be immersed in a story that can provoke genuine action and true connections.

When it comes to TXI, I’m only one of many misfits. If you follow this blog — we’ll try to post regularly as our goal is to have you join our mischief and have you love the field of immersive as much as we do! This blog helps us share with you the importance of understanding why immersive matters. We inspect and think with critical eyes in an effort to improve what is there and what is possible with experiences shared. This blog offers all TXI Explorers a space for their voice to be heard. We hope you are able to learn from the good, or maybe not so good, experiences we write here as we all work together to create a better tomorrow!