Purposeful XR: Affordances, Challenges, and Speculations for an Ethical Future
At this CHI '25 Workshop, participants will engage in deeper discussions, experience demos, and share practices around HCI research and XR addressing social challenges.
Applicants from all backgrounds such as academia, industry, and creative, are encouraged to write thoughtful papers and bring demos of in-progress, recent, or prior work.
Call for Participation
We ask prospective attendees to choose a challenge in a social domain and and submit a 1-4 page (excluding references) position paper using the ACM Conference Proceedings Preliminary Article Template on how particular XR affordances (e.g., spatial interaction, immersion) can solve that challenge. Good papers will detail a specific social challenge (e.g., increasing science literacy), why solutions inadequately address the problem, and the current barriers with solving the social problem. The rest of the paper will discuss the XR affordance and why it is uniquely positioned to address the social challenge. Papers may reference in-progress or recent work. Lastly, the paper will discuss what technological advances and/or future research is necessary for the affordance to better address the social challenge and which hurdles/harms need to be considered.
While we aim to accept as many attendees as possible, selection of workshop participants will be chosen based on the diversity of uses for their XR affordance, and how well the vision addresses the challenges of the social problem. There are more spaces for participants than demoers, and participants may be selected for the workshop but not to demo. All accepted papers will be published as a collection on ArXiv following the conference.
Optionally, participants can apply to demo during the workshop. Please use link for submissions.
Please note that at least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and that all participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the conference. Submissions are not anonymous. All authors must be listed in the submission link.
How to Submit
Please format your submissions as a PDF, and use this button to access the submission form.
For those that would like to bring an optional demo, additional instructions are provided.
Submission FormTimeline
| Call For Proposals Anounced | January 2025 |
| Workshop Submissions Due | March 1, 2025 |
| Notification of Acceptance | March 30, 2025 |
| Workshop Date | April 2025 |
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
Sample Workshop Schedule
| Time | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Welcome | Introduction of organizers and agenda |
| 9:05 | Keynote | Talk on XR affordances and their value to tackle social challenges |
| 9:25 | Participant Introductions | Participants introduce themselves to the people at their table |
| 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. |
| 10:20 | Break | |
| 10:30 | 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. |
| 10:45 | Session 2B: Affordance Demos | Participants will have time to try out demos, ask questions, and give feedback |
| 12:00 | 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 |
Accessibility
We strive to make the workshop as accessible as possible. All submissions must adhere to the CHI paper submission guidelines. As the workshop will be fully in person and interactive with no formal overhead projections. Position papers will be both printed and in digital format for participants to access. We will provide writing utensils and paper for brainstorming, but participants can also brainstorm with their laptop if preferred. Participants that are bringing demos will be asked to consider the accessibility of their artifact. Demos that involve head-mounted displays will be asked to provide to ensure that alternate ways of viewing the experience such as videos or photos.
Contact
Please email Samir Ghosh and Elizabeth Childs at samir.ghosh@ucsc.edu and elchilds@stanford.edu