Many immersive projects are struggling before they start
Why clarity, not creativity, determines whether immersive projects succeed
There's a moment I've seen play out many times...
A team is ready to kick start an immersive project. They’ve got buy-in, they’ve got budget. The conversations begin:
“Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
That's the moment things are off course and it’s my task to steer them back. But many immersive projects continue down the path of chasing cool.
Here's what nobody talks about: Many immersive projects don't struggle to land because of bad technology or insufficient budgets. They struggle much earlier - quietly, invisibly. They struggle in the brief. In the first meeting. When everything feels like it’s gliding along on excitement and the promise of technology, when in reality, no one's actually asked the hard questions yet.
The pattern that kills projects
You might know this story:
Company gets excited about innovation
Buys fancy equipment
Hires experts
Builds something impressive
Launches with fanfare
Six months later, nobody remembers why they built it
Projects do get built like this - a cool VR experience, an impressive AR app, a 360 video with all the right production values. And then... silence. No impact. No big shift. No one knows what to do with it six months later. It gets parked.
The failure isn't dramatic. Just a slow, quiet slide into irrelevance.
Why this keeps happening
Because "immersive" is a seductive word. It makes people feel future-facing. Creative and brave. It signals innovation without the discomfort of really questioning what we're doing and why.
“Immersive” isn't a strategy. It's just a delivery method.
Without a purpose behind it, it's just expensive decoration.
When I work with teams on immersive projects, I've noticed three common starting points, and they're all traps:
The Tech-First Brief: "We've bought some headsets. What can we do with them?"
The Trend-Led Brief: "XR is big in our industry. We should probably be doing something."
The Creative Hunch Brief: "I have this cool idea, and I think it would be amazing in VR."
None of these are inherently wrong. But they're incomplete. They all skip the same critical step: Who is this for, and what change are we trying to make in them?
If you can't answer that clearly and confidently, you're not ready to build anything yet.
The fog
There's a part of the process I think of as the fog. It's the moment after the initial excitement, when things start to feel slippery. When tech doesn't magically answer the brief. When enthusiasm collides with ambiguity.
This is where most projects speed up. They double down on production. They start moodboarding. They hire freelancers. They buy equipment. Anything to get out of the fog as fast as possible because it’s uncomfortable to be in.
But the fog is where the real work is.
Because the fog is honest. It reveals what you don't know. And it forces you to ask the kind of questions that don't have easy answers:
What do we believe this experience will do for people?
What do we want them to think, feel, understand or change?
Why immersive? Why not just a good video? Or a workshop? Or nothing at all?
The more uncomfortable these questions are, the more essential they are.
The cost of getting it wrong
When immersive projects fail, they don't just waste money. They waste something more valuable: credibility.
You get spectacle without substance. You get projects that impress on first glance, but have no staying power. You get immersive installations that gather dust because the person who championed them left the organisation, and no one else knows why they were built.
You get VR training modules no one uses. You get AR activations people scan once and forget. You get the illusion of innovation but without the impact.
I've seen people lose their appetite for innovation because their last immersive project turned into an expensive storage room. I've watched people become sceptical of new technology because their first experience was with something that looked impressive but felt hollow.
The worst part is how these failures get rationalised, because it reflects poorly (and incorrectly) on the industry as a whole:
"People weren't ready for it"
"The technology wasn't mature enough"
"Maybe we were too ahead of our time"
But the truth is usually simpler (and brutally real): Nobody asked whether the world needed this thing.
Oof.
Questions that save projects
Before you build anything immersive, get brutally honest about these:
Challenge your assumptions: What do you think this project is about? And what might be driving that? Ego? Fear? Pressure to keep up?
Find the real why: If you did nothing… what would happen? Who is this really for? What change are you hoping to see?
Name the kind of change you want to create: Emotional? Behavioural? Cognitive? Operational? If you can't name it, you can't design for it.
Only when that foundation is solid should you move into format, features, or production ideas. Because everything else flows from that core.
Two paths forward
You have a choice:
Path 1: Build impressive technology nobody needs
Get initial buzz and maybe win some awards
Watch engagement drop
Wonder why innovation feels so empty
Path 2: Build useful solutions that happen to use immersive technology
Start with real problems and create actual value
Build lasting engagement
Wonder why this feels obvious in hindsight!
Many people choose Path 1 because it feels more innovative. Savvy people choose Path 2 because it actually works.
What to do next
Immersive experiences are powerful… but only when they're pointed at something. They don't need to be impressive. They need to be felt. They need to be understood. They need to mean something.
And meaning takes work.
So the next time you or your team want to create something immersive, don't start with tech. Ask the tough questions. Embrace the fog. Stay there long enough to know what really matters.
I hope this helps.
- Jon
This newsletter is for people who want to build immersive experiences with meaning. I write weekly about designing experiences that change how people think, feel, and act.