AWE 2025: the experience around the headset.
The Long Beach XR gathering brings the full immersive experience into focus, from preparation to the moment after the headset comes off.
Illustrative photograph: Minh Pham / Unsplash. The person pictured is not affiliated with Hypetell.
The event in context
AWE USA 2025 took place on 10–12 June at the Long Beach Convention Center in California. The organiser’s event material presented a gathering around extended reality, with a programme for builders and companies exploring the field.
Looking back, we use that setting to ask a practical question: what does a person need before an immersive experience becomes useful? The answer includes more than the scene inside a headset.
Design the arrival
An experience starts when someone first encounters it. They need to understand what it is for, how much time it requires and what they will be asked to do. Setup and explanation are part of that first impression.
For an illustrative training session, we would make the task clear before entry, provide a simple route through the first interaction and explain how to pause or leave. This gives the person a stable framework for exploring something unfamiliar.
Design the return
The experience also needs a useful ending. A learner may want a record of what they practised. A design team may need to capture the decisions made in a shared scene. A creator may need to move an idea back into another tool.
We would evaluate those transitions alongside the immersive interaction itself. An impressive session that leaves a person unsure how to continue may be less useful than a simpler one with a clear next step.
Where AI could help
An intelligent assistant could help explain the task, respond to questions or summarise an outcome. Those are exploration ideas, rather than claims about a Hypetell product. Each would need its own evaluation.
Our perspective is that immersive computing becomes more compelling when it fits into a broader journey. The headset is one part of the experience; the transitions around it help give that experience lasting value.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
AWE USA 2025 — Official event dates and venue ↗AWE USA 2025 — Event overview ↗Research and official event materials inform this article. Commentary and illustrative scenarios reflect Hypetell’s editorial perspective.
