We present a content analysis of the privacy policy documentation and product descriptions from 146 smart sex toys across fourteen brands. We examine marketing narratives, policy accessibility, and disclosure completeness. We contribute an empirical illustration of a disregard for data privacy considerations in product descriptions and vague references to data privacy in privacy policy documentation. Among available privacy policy documentation, critical data storage and transmission details were frequently omitted or ambiguous, leading to misalignment with privacy claims in marketing materials. Our findings highlight inadequate transparency in the industry, paralleling issues in broader IoT systems and FemTech products and services. We underscore the need for HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to address the structural inefficiency of policy compliance, the need to elevate privacy as an essential feature in products that collect and store sensitive and intimate data, and the stakes of privacy in the context of digital intimacy.

Conversational agents are becoming integrated into virtual reality (VR) applications, enabling voice-based interaction within immersive environments. Yet, how users initiate communication with these agents remains an underexplored aspect of interaction design. We present a comparative study of four activation methods for initiating speech-based interaction with a conversational agent in VR. A custom-built prototype and task-oriented dialogue scenario supported a within-subjects study designed to explore how each method influences user experience. Through qualitative analysis of interview data, we identify key trade-offs related to control, naturalness, privacy, and social appropriateness. Participants’ preferences were shaped by situational factors, task demands, and the spatial positioning of the agent. We offer empirical insights and design recommendations for developing adaptive, multimodal, and inclusive conversational interfaces in VR, with broader implications for spatial computing and human-AI interaction.

Delta Fleet AI is a speculative VR demo exploring the hidden human labor behind autonomous mobility systems.Set in a future where autonomous vehicles rely on remote human "RoadRunners" to manage edge cases, users engage in high-stakes scenarios including route selection, manual driving, and obstacle disambiguation.Framed as a corporate onboarding simulation, the experience critiques the myth of full autonomy and exposes the cognitive and emotional demands placed on undervalued human operators.Built for MetaQuest 3, the project showcases VR's potential for provocative speculative design, inviting reflection on automation, labor, and the ethics of human-autonomy teaming.

Immersive technologies are increasingly seen as transformative tools in education, offering immersive and interactive learning experiences.While much research has focused on VR's role in content delivery, less attention has been given to its large-scale integration and systemic challenges.This study examines how VR is currently used in education, its future potential, and barriers to adoption.Through expert interviews with education developers in [anonymous country], we explore real-world challenges, including infrastructure, content availability, and usability.Additionally, we highlight VR's potential to re-engage students who have left the school system.Our findings reveal both the promise and complexity of VR in education, emphasizing the need for systemic readiness and pedagogical alignment.

Performing with technology is a complex and challenging task. Artists who use novel technologies, such as Virtual Reality, have to develop strategies of monitoring, maintenance, and recovery from errors with as minimal impact on the ongoing performance as possible. In this paper we draw on two case studies of mixed-reality performances and document strategies of Stage Managing VR Performance, Choreographing for Cables, Consistency & Charging, Improvising Interventions, and Priming Participants. We discuss how these practices expose areas ripe with potential for tool development, and how they can also be used to inform the design of interaction with other technologies, such as the Internet of Things.

This work-in-progress presents the design of an XR prototype for the purpose of educating basic cybersecurity concepts. We have designed an experimental virtual reality cyberspace to visualise data traffic over network, enabling the user to interact with VR representations of data packets. Our objective was to help the user better conceptualise abstract cybersecurity topics such as encryption and decryption, firewall and malicious data. Additionally, to better stimuli the sense of immersion we have used Peltier thermoelectric modules and Arduino Uno to experiment with multisensory XR. Furthermore, we reflect on early evaluation of this experimental prototype and present potential paths for future improvements.

This paper presents Fractured Objects for the design of virtual and mixed-reality experiences. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of three weeks of artistic activities within a residency program, we present six types of Fractured Objects that were used in sketching a mixed-reality performance. Building on these Fractured Objects, as they were articulated by the artists, we present speculative designs for their use in scenarios inspired by research within the IMX community. In discussion, we look to expand the concept of Fractured Objects by relating it to other design concepts such as Seamful Design and Wabi-Sabi, and explore the relationship to the temporality of interaction. We introduce Kintsugi VR with Fractured Objects, drawing on the concept of ‘golden repair’ in which the act of reconnecting fractured parts improves the resulting whole object.

It is often assumed that the interests of users and developers coincide, sharing a common goal of good design. Yet users often desire functionality that goes beyond what designers, and the organisations they work in, are willing to supply. Analysing online forums, complemented with interviews, we document how users, hackers and software developers worked together to discover and apply system exploits in hardware and software. We cover four cases: users of CPAP breathing assistance machines getting access to their own sleep data, 'hacking' the Nintendo switch game console to run non-authorised software, end-users building their own insulin supply system, and farmers repairing their own agriculture equipment against suppliers terms and conditions. We propose the concept of the 'gulf of interests' to understand how differing interests can create conflicts between end-users, designers, and the organisations they work in. This points us in the direction of researching further the political and economic situations of technology development and use.

This paper illustrates design work carried out to develop an interactive theater performance. HCI has started to address the challenges of designing interactive performances, as both audience and performers’ experiences are considered and a variety of professional expertise involved. Nevertheless, research has overlooked how such design unfolds in practice, and what role artists play in exploring both the creative opportunities and the challenges associated with interweaving digital technologies. A two-day workshop was conducted to tailor the use of the ChameleonMask, a telepresence technology, within a performance. The analysis highlights the artists’ work to make the mask work while framing, exploring and conceptualizing its use. The discussion outlines the artists’ skills and design expertise, and how they redefine the role of HCI in performance-led research.

This paper documents the experiences of those living under state surveillance. We interviewed our participants about how they lived under threat, and how it changed their technology practices. Our participants spanned three groups - journalists who reported from countries where their activities were illegal; activists who took part in civil disobedience, and individuals who worked in illegal activities that would have likely led to prosecution. In our analysis we cover four themes: first, 'the imagined surveillant'. Second, the danger and dependencies of technology use, third, their coping strategies, and lastly how belonging to a group can protect but also expose. In our discussion we cover how we can design for dissidents, and how to deal with the difficult questions this raises. We conclude by advocating for research that takes into account a critical view of the state in HCI and more broadly for an anti-surveillance stance in the design of technologies.

The Shared Individual is a live collaborative Mixed-Reality Performance in which a group of audience members can observe themselves from an individual's point of view. In this performance, a performer shares her view with audience members by wearing a head-mounted camera and steaming live video. By wearing a head-mounted display audience members can see themselves and follow performer's instruction to 'occupy' her body and become her. This instruction, in the form of performance, is designed to help the audience to sync with the performer in three different stages: visual synchronization, physical synchronization and emotional synchronization.

This research explores the use of technology in Mixed-Reality Performance, and how novel interactive technologies (VR, IoT, Bio-Data) can be used in designing such performances. Additionally, I explore the potential of these technologies to increase audience' interaction with the performance. The studies presented in this paper are still under development and mainly focus on three novel technologies within performances; Virtual Reality, Bio-Data and environmental IoT.

Designing for interactive performances is challenging both in terms of technology design, and of understanding the interplay between technology, narration, and audience interactions. Bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies afford new ways for artists to engage with audiences, and for audiences to become part of the artwork. Their deployment raises a number of issues for designers of interactive performances. This paper explores such issues by presenting five design ideas for interactive performance afforded by bio-sensing and bodily tracking (i.e. Microsoft Kinect) developed during two design workshops. We use these ideas, and the related scenarios to discuss three emerging issues namely: temporality of input, autonomy and control, and visibility of input in relation to the deployment of bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies in the context of interactive performances.

Designing bodily experiences is challenging. In this paper, we propose embodied sketching as a way of practicing design that involves understanding and designing for bodily experiences early in the design process. Embodied sketching encompasses ideation methods that are grounded in, and inspired by, the lived experience and includes the social and spatial settings as design resources in the sketching. Embodied sketching is also based on harnessing play and playfulness as the principal way to elicit creative physical engagement. We present three different ways to implement and use embodied sketching in the application domain of co-located social play. These include bodystorming of ideas, co-designing with users, and sensitizing designers. The latter helps to uncover and articulate significant, as well as novel embodied experiences, whilst the first two are useful for developing a better understanding of possible design resources.

This paper is an introduction to the "Future IKEA Catalogue", enclosed here as an example of a design fiction produced from a long standing industrial-academic collaboration. We introduce the catalogue here by discussing some of our experiences using design fiction` with companies and public sector bodies, giving some background to the catalogue and the collaboration which produced it. We have found design fiction to be a useful tool to support collaboration with industrial partners in research projects - it provides a way of thinking and talking about present day concepts, and present day constraints, without being overly concerned with contemporary challenges, or the requirements of academic validation. In particular, there are two main aspects of this we will discuss here, aspects that are visible in the enclosed catalogue itself. The first is the potential of design fiction as a sort of 'boundary object' in industry and academic collaboration, and second the role of critique. After this introduction to the paper we enclose the output of our collaboration in the form of the catalogue itself.

Currently there is no standard test collection for evaluation of Farsi information retrieval systems. In this paper we introduce Mahak, the first complete test collection generally available for evaluating Farsi information retrieval systems. We also discuss our construction process in detail. As a goal, we hope that Mahak will foster the development of Farsi information retrieval systems.