As the prevalence of digital media in our physical environments increases daily, what is the role and/or responsibility of designers in shaping our environments?

As better hardware and software merges the physical and digital environment closely together, users are exposed to more opportunities of investing time interacting with digital media in physical environments.

One of my everyday interactions with digital media that incorporates the physical environment is using BusGazers. By interacting with a real-time bus transit app, I have a reliable method of getting to places on time using public transportation. Although BusGazers is not an AR application, as new gadgets like the Hololense shift the dominant digital platform from small-screens to wearables, soon or later designers may have to create bus transit apps for wearable devices as well.

The emergence of environments in which the digital and physical become completely homogenous indicates a complete shift not only in how we will perceive environments, but also how we will behave and interact in these spaces. How users adopt this technology into their everyday lives will also determine the designer’s role in shaping these hybrid environments.

Despite this change, the principles that drive the design should be consistent regardless of what type of environment it is. Scale, proportion, proximity, navigation, sequence, and concept narrative are all relevant to the hybrid environment as well as the physical environment.