Augmented Reality for Exploring Social Spaces and Building Social ConnectionsACM ISS 2023

About

Augmented reality technology has made strides in recent years, affording us novel ways to interact with the physical spaces we inhabit. Yet at the same time, these physical spaces are also home to the communities of peoples that surround us. Can we better design augmented reality technology so that it allows us to both explore and understand the physical spaces around us while also building social bridges with those in our communities? This workshop intends to bring together researchers interested in thinking about how augmented reality can be used to improve not only people’s interactions with the spaces around them but also with the communities in which they live.

Call for participation

Over the past few years, much progress has been made in the capabilities of augmented reality. Advances in sensor-based tracking and vision algorithms have enabled AR devices to combine accurate real world information with virtual content, with applications in entertainment, medicine, and industrial manufacturing and maintenance. Yet, much of these interactions that augmented reality technology currently delivers is still non-social. At the same time, society is failing to address issues that cut to the core of the well-being of its members. Trust in society has been falling, and loneliness has been deemed a pervasive health issue. What can augmented reality bring to bear in this problem? Augmented reality has the potential to improve our fractured social interactions and re-humanize the person at the other end of the screen. Emerging AR platforms already promise to incorporate realistic virtual counterparts of users (e.g. Microsoft Mesh Avatars, Apple Vision Pro Personas), to create deeper and more interpersonal online communication. Digital twins of cities and spaces could allow us to visualize and experience life through the eyes of others. Can we design these tools to leverage augmented reality to enhance not only our understanding of the space around us but also our ability to create social connections with others?

Topics

We seek to bring together researchers who are interested in bringing augmented reality tools to bear on issues that are affecting broader society at large. Topics discussed may include but are not limited to: Using augmented reality to highlight and collectively solve community problems, building and maintaining social ties through augmented reality, leveraging augmented reality tools to understand distant (time, space, psychological, etc.) communities.

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of papers (2-4 pages, excluding references) that present ideas, including early stage and/or ongoing research, or recent work exploring how augmented reality can be used to build communities and address universal problems faced by many communities. All submissions will be peer-reviewed but not published. All accepted submissions will be made available to all participants before the workshop.

Please submit papers here: https://forms.gle/oP5LawdZLvbjYWWUA

Important Dates

• Paper Submission: September 25, 2023 (AOE)
• Author Notification: October 13, 2023 (AOE)

Contact

Please contact Tatiana Lau (tatiana.lau@tri.global) for more information