Social AR: Reimagining and Interrogating the Role of Augmented Reality in Face to Face Social Interactions

As augmented reality (AR) technologies become more pervasive, there is a growing interest in Social AR systems designed to support face to face interactions with collocated others. Prior research on AR often focuses on the technical aspects of the technology. However, at this early juncture, it is crucial to reflect and discuss the ethical, political, societal, and privacy implications of Social AR. This workshop aims to bring together industry practitioners and academic researchers to discuss the opportunities and challenges of social AR: from platforms to content creation, to self-representation. We aim to use a design fiction approach where workshop participants create speculative scenarios that interrogate the values imbued into Social AR. Based on these discussions, we will put together a set of initial recommendations for designers of Social AR technologies.

[1]  Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas,et al.  On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog... Unless You're Another Dog , 2019, CHI.

[2]  Ronald Azuma,et al.  A Survey of Augmented Reality , 1997, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[3]  David Philip Green,et al.  Using Design Fiction to Explore the Ethics of VR ‘In the Wild’ , 2019, TVX.

[4]  David A. Shamma,et al.  Social VR: A New Medium for Remote Communication and Collaboration , 2020, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[5]  Samuel Huron,et al.  Exploring Potentially Abusive Ethical, Social and Political Implications of Mixed Reality Research in HCI , 2020, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[6]  J. Bailenson,et al.  Social interaction in augmented reality , 2019, PloS one.

[7]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Making Social Matching Context-Aware: Design Concepts and Open Challenges , 2015, CHI.

[8]  David K. McGookin,et al.  Augmenting Multi-Party Face-to-Face Interactions Amongst Strangers with User Generated Content , 2017, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[9]  Kimberly M. Christopherson.  The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions: "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog" , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[10]  Kangsoo Kim,et al.  Revisiting Trends in Augmented Reality Research: A Review of the 2nd Decade of ISMAR (2008–2017) , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[11]  Ronald Azuma,et al.  A survey of augmented reality" Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments , 1997 .

[12]  Jeremy P. Birnholtz,et al.  Seeing and being seen: Co-situation and impression formation using Grindr, a location-aware gay dating app , 2015, New Media Soc..

[13]  Ken Perlin,et al.  Challenges Using Head-Mounted Displays in Shared and Social Spaces , 2019, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[14]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Supporting Opportunities for Context-Aware Social Matching: An Experience Sampling Study , 2016, CHI.

[15]  David K. McGookin,et al.  Head-mounted Displays, Smartphones, or Smartwatches? -- Augmenting Conversations with Digital Representation of Self , 2019, Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact..