Exploring Potentially Abusive Ethical, Social and Political Implications of Mixed Reality Research in HCI

In recent years, Mixed Reality (MR) headsets have increasingly made advances in terms of capability, affordability and end-user adoption, slowly becoming everyday technology. HCI research typically explores positive aspects of these technologies, focusing on interaction, presence and immersive experiences. However, such technological advances and paradigm shifts often fail to consider the ``dark patterns'', with potential abusive scenarios, made possible by new technologies (cf. smartphone addiction, social media anxiety disorder). While these topics are getting recent attention in related fields and with the general population, this workshop is aimed at starting an active exploration of abusive, ethical, social and political scenarios of MR research inside the HCI community. With an HCI lens, workshop participants will engage in critical reviews of emerging MR technologies and applications and develop a joint research agenda to address them

Developing arts-based methods for exploring virtual reality technologies: A university–industry case study

Collaborations between human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers and arts practitioners frequently centre on the development of creative content using novel – often emergent – technologies. Concurrently, many of the techniques that HCI researchers use in evaluative participant-based research have their roots in the arts – such as sketching, writing, artefact prototyping and role play. In this reflective paper, we describe a recent collaboration between a group of HCI researchers and dramatists from the immersive theatre organization Kilter, who worked together to design a series of audience-based interventions to explore the ethics of virtual reality (VR) technology. Through a process of knowledge exchange, the collaboration provided the researchers with new techniques to explore, ideate and communicate their work, and provided the dramatists with a solid academic grounding in order to produce an accurate yet provocative piece of theatrically based design fiction. We describe the formation of this partnership between academia and creative industry, document our journey together, and share the lasting impact it has had upon both parties

Using Design Fiction to Explore the Ethics of VR ‘In the Wild’

In this half-day workshop, we will explore the ethics of Virtual Reality (VR) through conversations framed around design fictions. Affordable head-mounted displays (HMDs) and accessible VR content are now within reach of large audiences, yet many of VR's most urgent challenges remain under-explored. In addition to the many known unknowns (e.g. how do we manage sensory conflicts and spatial limitations in VR?), there are many more unknown unknowns (e.g. what kinds of psychological, social and cultural impact will VR provoke?). By bringing together diverse scenarios from workshop participants, and bespoke design fictions created specifically to explore the ethics of VR, we will facilitate a rich discussion that will inform the development of three high-fidelity design fictions that will be used to explore the ethics of VR in future workshops, including one in Bristol, UK in November 2019, part of the Virtual Realities Immersive Documentary Encounters project

Hands-off Interactive Storytelling in Cinematic Virtual Reality

This is a research by creative practice that aims to explore a form of hands-off interactivity in cinematic virtual reality (CVR). The proposed model for interactive storytelling is based more on intuitive reactions than on conscious decision-making, enhancing diegetic and, thus, narrative immersion. The initial hypothesis states that hands-off interactivity can allow a user to experience a diegesis in which they can avoid being “pulled-back” from the immersion, an interruption of the story produced by the consciousness of explicit interaction and extra-diegetic interfaces. To achieve this, this project uses immersion, spatial storytelling, and dramatically-motivated soundscapes to facilitate and encourage navigation through simultaneous acoustic and dramatic spaces in one immersive environment. Using this setup, the interactive storytelling takes place as users are presented with two simultaneous storylines with their respective protagonists, which happen to be interdependent, influence each other, and are part of one integral story. Users would then be able to freely navigate and alternate between the two storylines – being influenced by strategically designed visual and acoustic diegetic stimuli – and thus play an active role in getting to make sense of the narration. This way, users generate inputs with organic movements around the fixed axis in which CVR uses are placed. This research is strongly focused on creative practice, the generation of creative outputs, and the analysis of the procedures and production workflows, to understand what are the creative and technical challenges for the proposed type of interactive storytelling. The project is also faced from an interdisciplinary approach that, while centred in a filmmaker’s perspective, makes a critical integration of concepts and techniques from other relevant disciplines to approach the expressive challenges proposed by CVR as an experimental medium