Interview with Advisory Board Member Dai-In Danny Han: 'We need to do more than just create 'wow' experiences, we can change behavior'

The CIIIC Advisory Board consists of 21 carefully selected members who provide solicited and unsolicited advice on substantive main issues to our program team. As representatives of the IX community and ambassadors of IX in the Netherlands, they are crucial for the connection with the industry. But who are these members, what do they do, and—above all—how do they view IX?

In part 5, Dai-In Danny Han from Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in Maastricht.

"In my work, I am particularly interested in designing immersive experiences to activate psychological mechanisms that help and encourage consumers to make more sustainable food choices."

"I see the development of IX (immersive experiences) increasingly shifting towards experiences that are co-created in real-time."

Who are you, what do you do?

"My name is Dai-In Danny Han, and I am currently a lecturer and chair of the Future of Food research group at the Hotel Management School Maastricht, part of Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. Additionally, I am part of the management team of the hotel school and actively conduct research in the field of designing and measuring immersive food experiences."

Why 'immersive', what is your connection to new content/technology?

"Since 2012, I have been working with immersive technologies when I started my doctoral research in the field of user experiences with mobile augmented reality. Since then, I have been involved in various projects that study XR-driven immersive experiences, mainly in the context of food, hospitality, and tourism. In my work, I am particularly interested in designing immersive experiences in these contexts to activate psychological mechanisms that help and encourage consumers to make more sustainable food choices."

Why did you want to be on the Advisory Board, what specifically appealed to you in/about the program?

"When I heard about the CIIIC program and the associated agenda, I felt that through my work with immersive experiences, I could/can make a valuable contribution to this development in the Netherlands. This also aligns with the definition and framework we have previously established for immersive experiences. Although I do not necessarily consider myself part of the creative industry, I draw a lot of inspiration from this sector to enrich experiences in food and hospitality. I believe there is much to learn and apply from each other's contexts.

I am particularly interested in being part of the immersive experience ecosystem, where we can find each other more easily and directly. In Maastricht, we have been building our immersive environment for four to five years now (first for Food Experiences, then also for other contexts), and we are currently working on an exciting development where AI-driven virtual people are integrated into our XR environment, allowing for real-time interaction to create new experiences."

What is your IX dream/mission?

"I strongly believe that the future of immersive experiences lies in the interplay between the physical and digital world—the so-called 'phygital' spaces. I want to contribute to understanding how these realities and associated experiences should be designed and organized so that meaningful encounters can emerge, (initially) particularly in the food, hospitality, and service sector. This requires not only insight into what is technically possible but also a thorough understanding of the contextual issues we want to address."

What developments in the field do you see that you find important to strengthen and why? Or: what do you view as the most important development in the IX field (as part of the creative industry)?

"I see the development of IX (immersive experiences) increasingly shifting towards experiences that are co-created in real-time. For the creative industry, I see more and more examples where experiences are no longer passively consumed by the audience, but where participants actively contribute to the experience as it unfolds. In this light, we still understand insufficiently about multi-user experiences, where not only the actor interacts with the audience, but audience members also influence each other's experiences. Especially for an immersive experience that must develop and persist, it is crucial that the experience is not interrupted or disturbed; otherwise, you are 'taken out' of the experience.

Think, for example, of a dining experience or a concert at a festival. The performing artist—whether we call this a chef practicing culinary art in a restaurant or a festival artist creating music—prepares a piece of art that is shared with the audience. In both cases, the way the prepared experience unfolds is highly dependent on the receiving audience and is co-created in the moment by their reactions and response to the art. However, it is not only about this bilateral interaction; other attendees at the restaurant or festival can also enhance or disrupt this co-creative endeavor. Will others resonate and enhance the experience, or will they disrupt and break the immersion? Just one noisy guest at the restaurant or a quarreling couple at the festival can take people out of an otherwise promising immersive experience.

How we can achieve this in practice is still a big question for me."

Public values play an important role at CIIIC, how do you view that? Extra stimulating or a potential obstacle?

"Public values are an important pillar of what we want to contribute. In my opinion, we need to do more than just create 'wow' experiences. Within our research group, we see a lot of potential in immersive experiences as a catalyst to encourage more sustainable behavior, such as food choices, in our society. We often ask ourselves: how can we encourage people to eat better and live better? Ultimately, people make choices based on what they find tasty and enjoyable. Therefore, we need to move away from warning against unsustainable behavior and the disastrous consequences, and instead design better (immersive) experiences that incorporate sustainability from the outset."

Finally, the Advisory Board provides advice—what is your message to the community? And how can they find and 'employ' you to potentially share their ideas with the community?

"We know that what we can do alone is limited. This network emerging from CIIIC offers a promising initiative to bring people from different domains together at the table—people who may not yet speak the same language but share the same passion and drive for immersive experiences. I strongly believe that we must leverage this potential to tackle joint issues in our own fields with new insights from other disciplines that can offer a fresh perspective on the complex societal challenges of today. I look forward to sharing my experiences and perspectives with others from those different fields and hope to both offer new insights and take away new perspectives that I had not yet considered.

You can most easily reach me via danny.han@zuyd.nl or via LinkedIn. I look forward to getting in touch with you!"

Photography: Ben Houdijk