Generative AI has increasingly been used for artistic creation, but little work has explored how it shapes the experiential meaning of practice. We consider how generative AI might transform the embodied and tangible process of instant photography through the UnReality Camera, an AI-mediated instant camera. The UnReality Camera prints a photo of the environment augmented by a user's spoken words as generative input. In a design probe, we explored how generative AI shapes people's perceptions of both photographic output and the broader photographic process. Although users valued artistic control, they also appreciated the creativity afforded by stochastic unpredictability. The waiting period for an unpredictable output elicited anticipatory suspense, and the camera's physical form evoked ownership and connection despite artificial generation. We discuss how people make sense of instant photography's experiential qualities when generative AI is embedded, and how their opposing affordances reshape interpretations of each other's experiential meaning.

We extend the seminal model of Pathak and Sönmez (2008) to a setting with multiple school districts, each running its own separate centralized match, and focus on the case of two districts. In our setting, in addition to each student being either sincere or sophisticated, she is also either constrained—able to apply only to schools within her own district of residence—or unconstrained—able to choose any single district within which to apply. We show that several key results from Pathak and Sönmez (2008) qualitatively flip: A sophisticated student may prefer for a sincere student to become sophisticated, and a sophisticated student may prefer for her own district to use Deferred Acceptance over the Boston Mechanism, irrespective of the mechanism used by the other district. We furthermore show that an unconstrained student may prefer for a constrained student to become unconstrained, regardless of the mechanisms used. Many of these phenomena appear abundantly in large random markets.

People often have things they want to say but hold back in conversations, fearing being vulnerable or facing social consequences. Online, this restraint can take a distinctive form: even when such thoughts are written out — in moments of anger, guilt, or longing — people may choose to withhold them, leaving them unsent. This process is underexamined; we investigate the experience of writing such messages within people’s digital communications. We find that unsent messages become expressive containers for suppressed feelings, where the act of writing creates a pause for reflection on the relationship and oneself. Building on these insights, we probed into how the design of the writing platforms of unsent messages affects people’s experiences and motivations. Speculating with participants on nine evocative variants of a note-taking platform, we highlight how design shapes the emotional, temporal, and ritualistic qualities of unsent messages, revealing tensions between people’s social desires and communicative actions.

In traditional journaling practices, authors express and process their thoughts by writing them down. We propose a somaesthetic-inspired alternative that uses the human body, rather than written words, as the medium of expression. We coin this embodied journaling, as people’s isolated body movements and spoken words become the canvas of reflection. We implemented embodied journaling in virtual reality and conducted a within-subject user study (N = 20) to explore the emergent behaviours from the process, comparing its expressive and reflective qualities to those of written journaling. When writing-based norms and affordances were absent, we found that participants defaulted towards unfiltered emotional expression, often forgoing words altogether. Rather, subconscious body motion and paralinguistic acoustic qualities unveiled deeper, sometimes hidden feelings, prompting reflection that happens after emotional expression rather than during it. We discuss both the capabilities and pitfalls of embodied journaling, ultimately challenging the idea that reflection culminates in linguistic reasoning.

Fulfilling social connections are crucial for human well-being and belonging, but not all relationships last forever. As interactions increasingly move online, the act of digitally severing a relationship — e.g. through blocking or unfriending — has become progressively more common as well. This study considers actions of “digital severance” through interviews with 30 participants with experience as the initiator and/or recipient of such situations. Through a critical interpretative lens, we explore how people perceive and interpret their severance experience and how the online setting of social media shapes these dynamics. We develop themes that position digital severance as being intertwined with power and control, and we highlight (im)balances between an individual’s desires that can lead to feelings of disempowerment and ambiguous loss for both parties. We discuss the implications of our research, outlining three key tensions and four open questions regarding digital relationships, meaning-making, and design outcomes for future exploration.

Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) are avatar-based livestreamers that are voiced and played by human actors. VTubers have been popular in East Asia for years and have more recently seen widespread international growth. Despite their emergent popularity, research has been scarce into the interactions and relationships that exist between avatarized VTubers and their viewers, particularly in contrast to non-avatarized streamers. To address this gap, we performed in-depth interviews with self-reported VTuber viewers (n=21). Our findings first reveal that the avatarized nature of VTubers fosters new forms of theatrical engagement, as factors of the virtual blend with the real to create a mixture of fantasy and realism in possible livestream interactions. Avatarization furthermore results in a unique audience perception regarding the identity of VTubers - an identity which comprises a dynamic, distinct mix of the real human (the voice actor/actress) and the virtual character. Our findings suggest that each of these dual identities both individually and symbiotically affect viewer interactions and relationships with VTubers. Whereas the performer's identity mediates social factors such as intimacy, relatability, and authenticity, the virtual character's identity offers feelings of escapism, novelty in interactions, and a sense of continuity beyond the livestream. We situate our findings within existing livestreaming literature to highlight how avatarization drives unique, character-based interactions as well as reshapes the motivations and relationships that viewers form with livestreamers. Finally, we provide suggestions and recommendations for areas of future exploration to address the challenges involved in present livestreamed avatarized entertainment.

Livestreaming has rapidly become a popular online pastime, with real-time interaction between streamer and viewer being a key motivating feature. However, viewers have traditionally had limited opportunity to directly influence the streamed content; even when such interactions are possible, it has been reliant on text-based chat. We investigate the potential of spatial interaction on the livestreamed video content as a form of direct, real-time input for livestreamed applications. We developed VIBES, a flexible digital system that registers viewers' mouse interactions on the streamed video, i.e., clicks or movements, and transmits it directly into the streamed application. We used VIBES as a technology probe; first designing possible demonstrative interactions and using these interactions to explore streamers' perception of viewer influence and possible challenges and opportunities. We then deployed applications built using VIBES in two livestreams to explore its effects on audience engagement and investigate their relationships with the stream, the streamer, and fellow audience members. The use of spatial interactions enhances engagement and participation and opens up new avenues for both streamer-viewer and viewer-viewer participation. We contextualize our findings around a broader understanding of motivations and engagement in livestreaming, and we propose design guidelines and extensions for future research.

Lying and deception are important parts of social interaction; when applied to storytelling mediums such as video games, such elements can add complexity and intrigue. We developed a game, “AlphaBetaCity”, in which non-playable characters (NPCs) made various false statements, and used this game to investigate perceptions of deceptive behaviour. We used a mix of human-written dialogue incorporating deliberate falsehoods and LLM-written scripts with (human-approved) hallucinated responses. The degree of falsehoods varied between believable but untrue statements to outright fabrications. 29 participants played the game and were interviewed about their experiences. Participants discussed methods for developing trust and gauging NPC truthfulness. Whereas perceived intentional false statements were often attributed towards narrative and gameplay effects, seemingly unintentional false statements generally mismatched participants’ mental models and lacked inherent meaning. We discuss how the perception of intentionality, the audience demographic, and the desire for meaning are major considerations when designing video games with falsehoods.

Asymmetric AR/VR collaboration systems bring a remote VR user to a local AR user’s physical environment, allowing them to communicate and work within a shared virtual/physical space. Such systems often display the remote environment through 3D reconstructions or 360° videos. While 360° cameras stream an environment in higher quality, they lack spatial information, making them less interactable. We present VirtualNexus, an AR/VR collaboration system that enhances 360° video AR/VR collaboration with environment cutouts and virtual replicas. VR users can define cutouts of the remote environment to interact with as a world-in-miniature, and their interactions are synchronized to the local AR perspective. Furthermore, AR users can rapidly scan and share 3D virtual replicas of physical objects using neural rendering. We demonstrated our system’s utility through 3 example applications and evaluated our system in a dyadic usability test. VirtualNexus extends the interaction space of 360° telepresence systems, offering improved physical presence, versatility, and clarity in interactions.

Non-playable characters (NPCs) are important in games, as they can provide guidance to the player, create social engagement, and advance the game's narrative. Although much research exists regarding NPC interactions for traditional gaming environments, e.g. desktop or console, fewer works have considered this from a virtual reality (VR) perspective. Our work first uncovers the salient and unique dimensions of VR NPC interactions through observations of 47 existing games. We find that VR NPC interactions have an extended set of interaction mechanisms due to two key factors - interaction triggers and player constraints within the game, driven by the unique qualities of physical motion and immersion afforded by the medium. We augment these findings through a user study performed on 18 participants in a VR environment. Participant interactions with a responsive NPC allow us to delve deeper into understanding player perception and expectations of NPC behaviour and interactions. Our findings outline player expectations for NPC realism, player agency during NPC interaction, and NPC expected behaviour and feedback. We tie our findings into discussions on player agency within VR, highlighting design suggestions to develop NPCs to better fit within social behaviour expectations.

Virtual reality (VR) can immerse users into engaging experiences, affording opportunities to study behaviour in simulated contexts such as decision-making processes. However, methodological research into designing meaningful VR experiences - experiences that promote appreciation and deeper understanding of a work - is still underdeveloped. In this two-part study, we investigate how visual point-of-view (POV) in VR impacts feelings of meaningfulness and empathy as well as objective decision-making processes. Our study revolves around a VR application that situates users in moral dilemmas from three different POVs. Data from the choices made is augmented with self-reported subjective data. We find that, from different POVs, users' subjective feelings do show change; users show greater empathy for virtual agents and have an increasingly meaningful experience from a first-person perspective, even if this is not always reflected in changes in their decisions. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings in the context of VR application design.

Sleep is important for humans, and past research has considered methods of improving sleep through technologies such as virtual reality (VR). However, there has been limited research on how such VR technology may affect the experiential and practical aspects of sleep, especially outside of a clinical lab setting. We consider this research gap through the lens of individuals that voluntarily engage in the practice of sleeping in VR. Semi-structured interviews with 14 participants that have slept in VR reveal insights regarding the motivations, actions, and experiential factors that uniquely define this practice. We find that participant motives can be largely categorized through either the experiential or social affordances of VR. We tie these motives into findings regarding the unique customs of sleeping in VR, involving set-up both within the physical and virtual space. Finally, we identify current and future challenges for sleeping in VR, and propose prospective design directions.

Narrative-rich video games provide opportunities for players to make choices at key points in the game, generating malleability within the game world and its characters. In this study, we explore the types of choices that exist in such games, how choices affect player experience, and how players make decisions when presented with choice. We first conduct interviews with game developers and perform a video observation analysis of existing choices to develop an initial classification system. We then perform a series of semi-structured interviews with video game players to understand how different choices impact player experience. Our findings reveal that choices influence player experience at several levels of meta-gameplay, having impacts on the game itself, the player-game relationship, and the player outside the game. Furthermore, we identify several key factors that affect player decision-making when faced with choice. Finally, we discuss the potential of choice in developing impactful virtual experiences.

Random Reward Mechanisms (RRMs) in video games are systems in which rewards are issued probabilistically upon certain trigger conditions, such as completing gameplay tasks, exceeding a playtime quota, or making in-game purchases. We investigated the relationship between RRM implementations and user experience. Video analysis of 35 RRM systems allowed for the creation of a classification system based on contrasting observed dimensions. Interviews with 14 video game players provided insights into how factors such as the affordances of non-optimal rewards and the trade-off between random luck and skill impact player perception and interaction with RRMs. We additionally investigated the relationship between auditory, visual, and gameplay design decisions and player expectations for RRM reward presentations, finding that the resources required to obtain the reward and the relative value of the reward impact its expected presentation. Finally, we applied our findings to propose design methodologies for creating engaging and significant RRM systems.