New paper about the design of physical-digital experiences

25 June 2025

The paper "How Physical-Digital Experiences are Designed",  by Johanna Lorenz, Jan Recker, and Leona Chandra Kruse jas been accepted for publication in the Journal Business & Information Systems Engineering. A preprint is available here.

Abstract:
Innovations in immersive systems technologies allow commercial experience providers to mix both digital and physical design components in their offerings, such as escape rooms or city tours, creating what we call a "physical-digital experience" that cuts across both physical and virtual realms. We conducted a multiple case study of four experience-economy providers to understand how such physical-digital experiences are designed by combining experiential components from both virtual and physical realms. We develop a theoretical model that explains how the deliberate and interdependent design of physical and digital activities creates a new and integrated experience that features spatiotemporal and social recombination, sensory enrichment, and cross-realm anchoring, which make a physical-digital experience more than just the sum of physical and digital experiential activities alone. Our research draws attention to the dual constitution of physical-digital experience and contributes to the growing scholarly discourse on the role of physicality as anchor, nexus, and lever for digital innovation.