Contemporary immersive theatre often limits audience agency to passive observation or spatial navigation, leaving social co-presence underdesigned. We present The Banquet, a co-located participatory sound theatre that turns culturally grounded ritual gestures—raising and clinking cups—into an interaction grammar for multi-user storytelling. Inspired by Dream of the Red Chamber, the system uses Interactive Audio Augmented Reality (IAAR) to embed narrative logic in embodied action, supported by high-precision tracking and a distributed Wi-Fi audio broadcast architecture. Layered spatial audio and subtle acoustic cues enable strangers to coordinate narrative progression without screens. We discuss how formalizing social rituals as tangible interfaces can support embodied negotiation and collective meaning-making in shared space.

We introduce DuoMorph, a design and fabrication method that synergistically integrates Fused Deposition Modeling(FDM) printing and pneumatic actuation to create novel shape-changing interfaces. In DuoMorph, the printed structures and heat-sealed pneumatic elements are mutually designed to actuate and constrain each other, enabling functions that are difficult for either component to achieve in isolation. Moreover, the entire hybrid structure can be fabricated through a single, seamless process using only a standard FDM printer—including both heat-sealing and 3D/4D printing. In this paper, we define a design space including four primitive categories that capture the fundamental ways in which printed and pneumatic components can interact. To support this process, we present a fabrication method and an accompanying design tool. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of DuoMorph through example applications and performance demonstrations.

Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely adopted in domains such as gaming, education, and healthcare, where 3D props play a central role in enabling immersive interaction. With the advancement of generative AI, 3D props can now be created rapidly; however, little research has explored how gestures and speech can be integrated to support prop generation. To address this gap, we introduce GestuProp, a VR prop generation system driven by co-speech gestures. Building on a formative study with 30 participants, we proposed a gesture design space and developed the VR system GestuProp. We then conducted a user study with 14 participants, which showed that GestuProp demonstrates good usability and favorable user experiences, while also revealing how object categories influence gesture use and interaction. These findings highlight the potential of gesture–speech synergy to advance prop generation in VR.

Food perception is a multisensory experience shaped by environmental cues such as ambient lighting. Previous studies have demonstrated that lighting can impact how satisfied we feel while dining. However, many of these studies were conducted in controlled laboratory settings with standardized meals, overlooking how lighting interacts with personal dietary choices and diverse dining contexts. This paper introduces LumiBite, a portable lighting system integrated into a lunchbox, designed for dining environments to enable personalized lighting adjustments during meals. Through a seven-day in-the-wild study with six participants, where they freely chose when, what, and where to eat, we explored the feasibility of deploying LumiBite and investigated how user agency in customizing lighting settings impacts dining satisfaction, sensory perception and dietary behaviors. Our findings demonstrate that LumiBite not only enhances food aesthetics but also shifts users from passive consumers to active meal curators. The study highlights key challenges, including cultural dining practices and ambient light interference, and offers actionable design principles for creating context-aware, culturally sensitive dining technologies.

While Swarm User Interfaces (SUIs) have succeeded in enriching tangible interaction experiences, their limitations in autonomous action planning have hindered the potential for personalized and dynamic interaction generation in tabletop games. Based on the AI-Gadget Kit we developed, this paper explores how to integrate LLM-driven agents to enable SUIs to execute interaction tasks within tabletop games. After defining the design space of this kit, we elucidate the method for designing agents that can extend the meta-actions of SUIs to motion planning. Furthermore, we introduce an add-on prompt method that simplifies the design process for four interaction relationships in tabletop games. Lastly, we present an example that illustrates the potential of AI-Gadget Kit to construct personalized complex interactions in SUI tabletop games.

Automated generation of large-scale 3D scenes presents a significant challenge due to the resource-intensive training and datasets required. This is in sharp contrast to the 2D counterparts that have become readily available due to their superior speed and quality. However, prior work in 3D procedural modeling has demonstrated promise in generating high-quality assets using the combination of algorithms and user-defined rules. To leverage the best of both 2D generative models and procedural modeling tools, we present TerraCraft, a novel framework for generating geometrically high-quality 3D city-scale scenes. By utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs), TerraCraft can generate city-scale 3D scenes from natural text descriptions. With its intuitive operation and powerful capabilities, TerraCraft enables users to easily create geometrically high-quality scenes readily for various applications, such as virtual reality and game design. We validate TerraCraft’s effectiveness through extensive experiments and user studies, showing its superior performance compared to existing baselines.

InkBrush is a new sketch-based 3D drawing tool for creating 3D ink paintings using free-form 3D ink strokes. It offers a digital calligraphy brush and various editing tools to generate realistic ink-like brush strokes with attributes like hairy edges, ink drips, and scattered dots. Users can adjust parameters such as moisture, color, darkness, dryness, and stroke style to customize the appearance of the brush strokes. The development of InkBrush was guided by a design study involving artists and designers. It was developed as a plugin for Blender, a popular 3D modeling tool, and its effectiveness and usability were evaluated through a user study involving 75 participants. Preliminary feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, indicating that InkBrush was intuitive and easy to use. Following this, we also sought in-depth assessments from experts in ink painting and 3D design. Their evaluations further demonstrated the effectiveness of InkBrush.

Shadow puppetry, a culturally rich storytelling art, faces challenges transitioning to the digital realm. Creators in the early design phase struggle with crafting intricate patterns, textures, and basic animations while adhering to stylistic conventions - hindering creativity, especially for novices. This paper presents Lumina, a tool to facilitate the early Chinese shadow puppet design stage. Lumina provides contour templates, animations, scene editing tools, and machine-generated traditional puppet patterns. These features liberate creators from tedious tasks, allowing focus on the creative process. Developed based on a formative study with puppet creators, the web-based Lumina enables wide dissemination. An evaluation with 18 participants demonstrated Lumina’s effectiveness and ease of use, with participants successfully creating designs spanning traditional themes to contemporary and science-fiction concepts.

With the advancement of interactive technology in the information age, the problem of “visual blindness” in the field of display design has become increasingly prevalent in public scene interaction design. Therefore, it has become crucial to address how new forms of interaction and interaction scenes can be adopted to attract the public. In the context of robotics’ continuous development, robots are playing an increasingly prominent role as interactive subjects in public scene interaction experiences. In new fields such as digital entertainment, spatial experience, and new media art, various typical scenes of robot interaction have emerged. In this study, a window robot named “Yousu” was developed based on an ancient Chinese mythological character and deployed in the window of a bookstore in Beijing. A user experiment was conducted to investigate how to design a reasonable and effective character robot interaction in public scenes to enhance the interaction scenes’ attractiveness.

In this paper, we propose using the auricle - the visible part of the ear - as a means of expressive output to extend body language to convey emotional states. With an initial exploratory study, we provide an initial set of dynamic and static auricular postures. Using these results, we examined the relationship between emotions and auricular postures, noting that dynamic postures involving stretching the top helix in fast (e.g., 2Hz) and slow speeds (1Hz) conveyed intense and mild pleasantness while static postures involving bending the side or top helix towards the center of the ear were associated with intense and mild unpleasantness. Based on the results, we developed a prototype (called Orrechio) with miniature motors, custom-made robotic arms and other electronic components. A preliminary user evaluation showed that participants feel more comfortable using expressive auricular postures with people they are familiar with, and that it is a welcome addition to the vocabulary of human body language.