From Designing Form to Designing Behaviour: Interactive Space, Scripting and Digital Figure in XR Environments

Abstract

In interactive digital environments, the design of space includes both the definition of form and the design of the dynamics that regulate the interaction between users, objects and environments. Within this context, drawing may be reinterpreted as an extended practice capable of organising geometric configurations, behaviours, relationships and transformations over time. This contribution investigates such a transformation by bringing into dialogue three design domains: the conception of space as an interactive system, the use of scripting as an operational language, and the design of the digital figure in immersive worlds.
Through a critical reading of the fundamental structures of programming logic – variables, conditions, loops and events – the study proposes interpreting code as a form of procedural drawing capable of translating spatial intentions into executable processes. At the same time, the analysis of character art highlights how the virtual character operates as a design device through which users perceive and traverse digital space. The virtual body thus assumes the role of mediator between environment and action, contributing to the construction of spatial experience.
The article therefore proposes a reinterpretation of drawing within contemporary design practices, showing how, in the contexts of Extended Reality, the design of space necessarily entails defining the rules that govern its behaviour as well as the digital subjects that inhabit and activate it.