Designing Immersive Experiences for Education – Leggere: Forte! Case Study
When immersive technology listens to education, it becomes a space for desire, freedom, and meaningful connection.
When Experience Design Meets Education
At In2real, we’re used to designing digital spaces to tell stories about products, services, and brands. But when technology meets education, the mission changes profoundly. It’s no longer about dazzling people—it’s about taking care.
With Leggere: Forte!, we faced a different kind of challenge. We weren’t asked to create just another VR environment; we needed to build a mental and sensory space where students could rediscover reading as a personal, free, and transformative act.
The goal wasn’t to make students “read more” just to count pages or minutes. It was to design an experience that could open up new spaces of imagination, desire, and critical reflection. An experience that could help reshape their relationship with knowledge—making it more playful, emotional, and conscious.
The Context: Education, Technology, and New Challenges
This project was born from a clear educational need, as outlined by the DISPOC Department of the University of Siena. Today’s young people are growing up in a world where the ability to desire and to envision their own future is at risk. Psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati calls it “the time of the eclipse of desire”—an era where freedom, without direction, often becomes disorientation – sourch.
At the same time, schools face another pressing issue: the risk of early school dropout. Leggere: Forte! was created precisely to address this, by giving students new tools to feel like protagonists of their educational path.
We live in a society where technology often feeds passivity. But it can also become a space for growth and dialogue if used consciously. The challenge, then, is to build learning environments where technology and human connection intersect, creating experiences that speak to young people in their own language—without losing depth.
Leggere: Forte! – An Educational and Innovative Project
Leggere: Forte! is not just about promoting reading aloud. It’s a comprehensive educational intervention designed to:
Encourage the development of critical and reflective thinking.
Help young people recognize and nurture their own desires and life projects.
Promote an educational use of immersive technologies, creating new ways to experience learning.
The project, promoted by Regione Toscana, involves the Universities of Siena, Florence, and Pisa, together with Indire, the Tuscany Regional School Office, and Cepell. Here, VR is not an end in itself—it’s a tool to create an “other space,” where reading is no longer perceived as an obligation but as an act of freedom.
Reading in VR becomes an immersive experience that stimulates emotions, divergent thinking, and personal interpretations of each story.
What In2real Did: Designing a Gentle Future
An Immersive Experience, But Different
For In2real, taking part in Leggere: Forte! meant rethinking the very concept of immersive experience from the ground up. We weren’t tasked with building a spectacular virtual world or a flashy metaverse. We needed to design a mental and emotional space where students could reclaim reading as something intimate and personal.
The goal was to create an educational experience where technology is not the focus, but rather a tool to help rediscover desire, reflection, and personal growth—especially for those who usually struggle to see reading as a source of pleasure, rather than as a school task.
Gaming Culture as Design Inspiration
One of our main inspirations was narrative gaming and experiential videogames.
Today’s students are used to interactive digital experiences where storytelling blends with exploration, curiosity, and discovery. That’s why we chose to draw from gaming language—not to gamify reading with scores or levels, but to create a space where students could move freely, explore symbols, activate visual metaphors, and set their own pace.
We looked to walking simulators, contemplative games, and open-ended experiences where the interaction is fluid, open, and non-competitive. This type of gaming language gave us the keys to design an environment that’s engaging but never intrusive, one that stimulates imagination without forcing behaviors.
In this context, VR becomes a space for emotional exploration, not a performance arena. A world where it’s okay to pause, observe, reflect—without any pressure.
A Gentle, Suspended Future—Not a Cyber One
Following this design vision, we deliberately moved away from the clichés of futuristic tech aesthetics. No hyper-realistic simulations, no dystopian cyber environments. We wanted to build a suspended, gentle future, a welcoming space where students could feel safe and comfortable.
We created a world that doesn’t impose itself but invites exploration. It’s a kind of mental landscape, not a replica of reality but a new environment where time slows down and silence becomes part of the experience.
3D Symbols to Evoke Emotions
Following this design vision, we deliberately moved away from the clichés of futuristic tech aesthetics. No hyper-realistic simulations, no dystopian cyber environments. We wanted to build a suspended, gentle future, a welcoming space where students could feel safe and comfortable.
We created a world that doesn’t impose itself but invites exploration. It’s a kind of mental landscape, not a replica of reality but a new environment where time slows down and silence becomes part of the experience.
Close Collaboration with the Pedagogical Team
This wasn’t just a creative exercise. We worked in close collaboration with the educational and scientific team at the University of Siena, participating in workshops, co-design sessions, and iterative feedback loops.
Every visual, sound, and interaction was carefully aligned with the pedagogical goals of the project: to stimulate critical thinking, foster desire, nurture irony, and open new perspectives. Just like in some of the best games, where the story unfolds without being imposed, here too the VR reading experience becomes a personal, transformative journey.
Lightweight, Inclusive Technology for Schools
We focused on creating a smooth and lightweight experience, optimized for the technological realities of schools.
Our team worked to optimize the 3D assets, simplify the user interface, and ensure intuitive interactions. We eliminated technological barriers to make the experience inclusive and accessible, even for students who had never tried VR before.
Data Architecture to Support Educational Research
We also developed a custom data collection system, not for tracking but to provide researchers with insights into immersive behavior.
Session duration, exploration paths, and interaction choices become qualitative data to help understand how VR reading affects engagement, desire, and reflective thinking. It’s about gathering meaningful information, without invading personal privacy.
A Cultural Challenge, Not Just a Technological One
For us, Leggere: Forte! has been more than a VR project—it has been a laboratory of humanity and educational innovation.
We used technology to serve a higher purpose: helping students rediscover the pleasure of reading, explore desire, and cultivate divergent thinking. And we did it with the tools of our time: VR, gaming culture, immersive creativity, and ethical, participatory design.
Because when technology serves education, it can truly make a difference.
Leggere Forte! Case Study
Experience and Learning: Why It Works
Designing an immersive experience for schools means questioning how learning really happens, how emotions and concepts are stored in memory, and how they shape personal identity. When carefully crafted, immersive experiences are not just engagement tools—they’re powerful levers for meaningful and lasting learning.
Research shows that VR can boost attention and memory retention. The PwC 2020 report highlights that VR increases engagement by up to 75% compared to traditional methods, while the XR Association notes that immersive technologies enhance knowledge retention through multisensory experiences. Learning in VR involves both body and mind, creating experiences that stick because knowledge is not just transmitted—it’s lived.
This approach is particularly effective when teaching soft skills and life skills, which the World Economic Forum and Deloitte identify as critical for the future: critical thinking, empathy, adaptability, creativity. These aren’t easy to develop through traditional lectures, but they flourish in environments that encourage imagination and personal reflection.
In Leggere: Forte!, VR doesn’t replace books—it adds a new layer of meaning. Students immerse themselves in environments that amplify the emotional and symbolic dimensions of the stories, turning reading into a personal, profound act. There’s no predefined path, just an invitation to explore, pause, and dialogue with the imagery—just like in the best narrative games.
The project’s focus on irony and desire finds a natural home in VR. Irony helps students see reality from unexpected angles. Desire drives them beyond the present experience, pushing them to build personal meaning. VR, in this sense, is not just a tech tool—it’s a medium for inhabiting complexity, exercising divergent thinking, and forging new, personal connections between texts and self.
That’s the real power of Leggere: Forte!—not bringing school into VR, but bringing VR into education, making it more human, freer, and capable of shaping critical, creative citizens. An experience that, like a great book, leaves lasting traces.
Innovating to Educate
Leggere: Forte! has shown us that technology can play a deeply human role, when it’s designed not to impress but to accompany, not to entertain but to nurture thinking and desire.
In a world where young people risk losing themselves in a fragmented, uncertain present, creating digital spaces that stimulate imagination and critical reflection is no longer a luxury—it’s a responsibility. We’ve seen how VR, when designed with care, can become a place to slow down, listen, reflect, and rediscover the simple pleasure of reading—and imagining a different future.
For In2real, this project is not an end point—it’s a new beginning.
Today, we invite you to rewrite together the rules of a desirable, inclusive future, where the only limit is imagination. A future where technology becomes a bridge, not a wall. Where innovation means educating for critical thinking, irony, and the courage to grow as individuals and as communities.
If you share this vision and want to collaborate on experiences that put humanity, creativity, and freedom at the center, let’s talk. We’re ready to imagine new worlds together.
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I believe great communication begins with listening. With a background in design and five years leading In2real’s communication efforts, I work with our team to help brands connect with their audiences through clear strategy, visual quality, and digital storytelling.