Diminished reality is an immersive technology that can selectively reduce the visual salience of real-world objects, altering how people see their environment without physically changing it. This makes it a novel and innovative form of digital choice architecture in supporting consumer decision-making. While the technical development of diminished reality has advanced within computer science, our study is the first to examine how people experience and interact with the technology in practice and reflect its use from a behavioral science perspective. This study addresses these gaps by exploring how diminished reality shaped food-related decisions and how consumers envisioned its future adoption. To explore this, we developed a diminished reality prototype designed to support sustainable food choices and used it to conduct a qualitative study combining think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews with 25 participants in a simulated supermarket setting. Using framework method analysis, we found that diminished reality shaped participants’ choices by guiding attentional processes, altering perceptions of product presence, sparking curiosity, and prompting moral reasoning – all of which interacted with habitual preferences to shape decision-making. We also explored key motivations and barriers related to future adoption of diminished reality, including perceived ease of use, usefulness, autonomy, psychological reactance and trust in technology. These findings contribute to the emerging literature on mixed reality and digital choice architecture, offering theoretical insights into consumer decision-making and practical implications for future diminished reality development and implementation.

Measuring interoception ('perceiving internal bodily states') has diagnostic and wellbeing implications. Since heartbeats are distinct and frequent, various methods aim at measuring cardiac interoceptive accuracy (CIAcc). However, the role of exteroceptive modalities for representing heart rate (HR) across screen-based and Virtual Reality (VR) environments remains unclear. Using a PolarH10 HR monitor, we develop a modality-dependent cardiac recognition task that modifies displayed HR. In a mixed-factorial design (N=50), we investigate how task environment (Screen, VR), modality (Audio, Visual, Audio-Visual), and real-time HR modifications (±15%, ±30%, None) influence CIAcc, interoceptive awareness, mind-body measures, VR presence, and post-experience responses. Findings showed that participants confused their HR with underestimates up to 30%; environment did not affect CIAcc but influenced mind-related measures; modality did not influence CIAcc, however including audio increased interoceptive awareness; and VR presence inversely correlated with CIAcc. We contribute a lightweight and extensible cardiac interoception measurement method, and implications for biofeedback displays.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many nursing homes had to restrict visitations. This had a major negative impact on the wellbeing of residents and their family members. In response, residents and family members increasingly resorted to mediated communication to maintain social contact. To facilitate high-quality mediated social contact between residents in nursing homes and remote family members, we developed an augmented reality (AR)-based communication tool. In this study, we compared the user experience (UX) of AR-communication with that of video calling, for 10 pairs of residents and family members. We measured enjoyment, spatial presence and social presence, attitudes, behavior and conversation duration. In the AR-communication condition, residents perceived a 3D projection of their remote family member onto a chair placed in front of them. In the video calling condition, the family member was shown using 2D video. In both conditions, the family member perceived the resident in the video calling mode on a 2D screen. While residents reported no differences in their UX between both conditions, family members reported higher spatial presence for the AR-communication condition compared to video-calling. Conversation durations were significantly longer during AR-communication than during video calling. We tentatively suggest that there may be (unconscious) differences in UX during AR-based communication compared to video calling.