Purposeful XR: Affordances, Challenges, and Speculations for an Ethical Future

View the proposal on ACM DL!

At this CHI '25 Workshop, participants engaged in deeper discussions, experienced demos, and shared practices around HCI research and XR addressing social challenges.

Applicants were from many backgrounds such as academia, industry, and creative, and wrote thoughtful papers and brought demos of in-progress, recent, or prior work.

Photo Slideshow


Position Papers and Attendees

Presence/Simulation

Utilizing Virtual Reality for Wildfire Evacuation Training
Alison Crosby, MJ Johns, Katheine Isbister, Sri Kurniawan
(paper CHIXR/2025/01 )
Virtual Reality for Urban Walkability Assessment
Viet Hung Pham, Malte Wagenfeld, Regina Bernhaupt
(paper CHIXR/2025/02 )

Alternate Views

Investigating Environments’ and Avatars’ Effects on Thermal Perception in Virtual Reality to Reduce Energy Consumption
Martin Kocur, Niels Henze
(paper CHIXR/2025/03 )
Change Your Perspective, Widen Your Worldview! Societally Beneficial Perceptual Filter Bubbles in Personalized Reality
Jannis Strecker, Luka Bekavac, Kenan Bektaş, Simon Mayer
(paper CHIXR/2025/04 )

Location for Engagement

Bridging Generations: Augmented Reality for Japanese Wartime Oral History
Karen Abe
(paper CHIXR/2025/05 )
Community Empowerment through Location-Based AR: The Thámien Ohlone AR Tour
Kai Lukoff
(paper CHIXR/2025/06 )

Ethical Challenges

No Fuss, Just Function - A Proposal for Non-Intrusive Full Body Tracking in XR for Meaningful Spatial Interactions
Elisabeth Mayer, Thomas Odaker, Dieter Kranzlmüller
(paper CHIXR/2025/07 )
Identifying Ethical Challenges in XR Implementations in the Industrial Domain: A Case of Off-Highway Machinery
Anastasia Sergeeva, Claudia Negri-Ribalta, Gabriele Lenzini
(paper CHIXR/2025/08 )

Interaction/immersion

Leveraging Agency in Virtual Reality to Enable Situated Learning
Eileen McGivney
(paper CHIXR/2025/09 )
Leveraging Metaphors in a VR Serious Game for Computational Thinking
Inmaculada Rodríguez, Anna Puig
(paper CHIXR/2025/10 )

Organizers

Elizabeth Childs Stanford University

Samir Ghosh University of California, Santa Cruz

Sebastian Cmentowski University of Waterloo

Andrea Cuadra Olin College of Engineering

Rabindra Ratan Michigan State University

Contact

If you'd like to get in touch about the workshop, please feel free to email Samir and Elizabeth

Workshop Schedule (archive)

Time Activity Description
9:00 Welcome Introduction of organizers and agenda.
9:05 Participant Introductions Participants introduce themselves to the group with a 1-slide introduction; 1-2 minutes each.
9:30 Session 1: Meaningful XR Affordances Discussion of how affordances are used across different domains, and ethical challenges that arise with the affordance. Participants will present highlights from their discussion to the group.
10:30 Break
11:10 Session 2A: Affordance Demos Chosen demos will give a quick introduction to their demo, its affordance and its relation to the social challenge, and any feedback they would like from the group.
11:20 Session 2B: Affordance Demos Participants will have time to try out demos, ask questions, and give feedback
11:55 Session 3: XR Futures Discussion of necessary technology and research directions to address social challenges. Participants will present highlights from their discussion to the group.
12:50 Closing Remarks
13:00 Social Optional Lunch