Designing Digital Vertigo Experiences

Many people enjoy “vertigo” sensations caused by intense playful bodily activities such as spinning in circles, and riding fairground rides. Game scholar Caillois calls such experiences “vertigo play,” elucidating that these enjoyable activities are a result of confusion between sensory channels. In HCI, designers are often cautious to avoid deliberately causing sensory confusion in players, but we believe there is an opportunity to transition and extend Caillois’ thinking to the digital realm, allowing designers to create novel and intriguing digital bodily experiences inspired by traditional vertigo play activities. To this end, we present the Digital Vertigo Experience framework. Derived from four case studies and the development of three different digital vertigo experiences, this framework aims to bring the excitement of traditional vertigo play experiences to the digital world, allowing designers to create more engaging and exciting body-based games, and provides players with more possibilities to enjoy novel and exciting play experiences.