The rise in capability and ubiquity of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has enabled its application to the field of Socially Interactive Agents (SIAs). Despite significant interest in leveraging modern AI-powered components in real-time SIA research, substantial friction remains due to the absence of a standardized and universal SIA framework. As such, we developed Estuary: a multimodal (text, audio, and soon video) framework which facilitates the development of low-latency, real-time SIAs. Estuary seeks to reduce repeat work between studies and to provide a flexible platform that can be run entirely off-cloud to maximize configurability, controllability, reproducibility of studies, and speed of agent response times. We achieve this by constructing a robust multimodal framework which incorporates current and future components seamlessly into a modular and interoperable architecture.

Immersive design fiction is a novel approach that embeds speculative interactions within a rich virtual reality (VR) storyworld. Immersive design fictions use VR to translate new design opportunities into story-driven, embodied experiences by positioning the participant as a character in a narrative world. This paper presents a case study of an immersive design fiction that depicts a fictionalized reimagining of an industry partner's work practices. This VR experience explores speculative interfaces for creative work and collaboration in the context of a fictional workplace environment. By placing design fictions within rich immersive contexts such as room-scale VR, researchers and practitioners can go beyond prototyping imagined interfaces to also speculate about the interaction rituals and surrounding social context within an experiential storyworld. This approach makes methodological and theoretical contributions to design fiction research by demonstrating a toolkit for exploring and reflecting upon the intersections between speculation, embodiment, and narrative context.

In this paper, we describe an approach to lifelogging that positions everyday objects, vehicles, and built environments as worthy of their own lifelog systems. We use this approach to anchor what we call ambient storytelling, and we argue that this methodology opens up new opportunities to design for rich and enduring relationships between humans and non-humans. We will explore this research approach through a series of examples, including: (1) a building that learns about its occupants and reveals its lifelog through playful solicitation and reciprocation, (2) story-objects that reveal backstory to their users, and (3) an automotive-sensor system and lifelog platform that facilitates context-specific playful interaction between a driver and their car. In this last example, we were interested in how a vehicle-based lifelog could augment drivers' existing propensities to project character onto their cars. In each of these examples, we reposition the concept of the lifelog to consider the "lives" of objects and the relationship between humans and non-humans as a worthwhile area of research.

The authors describe the real-time acoustic display capabilities developed for the virtual environment workstation (VIEW) project. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditor symbology, a related collection of representational auditory objects or icons, can be designed using the auditory cue editor, which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with three-dimensional visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events.>