User-Friendly, human centred, empathetic, inclusive and user-experience design, are all conceptual innovations that have historically codified packages of standardised strategies for invention and innovation. Immersion is forgetful design (IF Design) aims to build on existing discoveries by adhering to a new definition of ‘immersive’ with a focus on enhancing the depth of single state immersion.

Immersion is forgetful and symbiotic and ingrained.

To be immersive, there needs to be a blur between the biological actualities of your sense of self and a separate medium that you connect with, physically or psychologically. The closer we get to that state, the closer we get to total immersion.

The opening metaphor defines the principles in this school of design. Design to be forgotten.

To save the complexities, it’s best I begin with an example of what I mean by this definition of immersion.

Take the AirPods Pro: lightweight, transparency mode, good spatial audio & ergonomic. Elements that when combined with enough time, contribute to the device’s defining characteristic; it’s ease to be forgotten. This medium, originally separate to my organic biological self, has almost fastidiously immersed itself into my reality, becoming an extension of my existence. Through forgetting the existence of the external medium, I unconsciously gain a particular skill, in this scenario, I can now hear noise (music), with incredible accuracy in my head.