Introduction

Extended Reality (XR) has finally emerged as a mainstream technology. Recent advances in commercial Virtual Reality (VR) and the initiatives by big tech companies to build the "Metaverse" have significantly heightened interest in this medium. This surge has prompted designers from various disciplines to seek effective ways to communicate their concepts to technical developers and to rapidly prototype XR experiences. Furthermore, there has been an exponential increase in the utilization of new technologies, such as generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), for content creation. Such technologies have shown great promise in accelerating the design process across multiple fields.

This workshop will bring together researchers and industry practitioners from different backgrounds to discuss the future of prototyping for VR, AR, and 3D User Interfaces, and help chart a course for the future of XR prototyping techniques. We invite authors to submit 2-4 page position papers (double column) on any of the following topics:

• Rapid prototyping for XR experiences (AR, VR, MR)

• Rapid prototyping by novice and non-tech-savvy designers

• Prototyping for immersive storytelling

• Prototyping for Haptic/tactile feedback in XR applications

• XR hardware design and prototyping

• Repurposing of existing prototyping techniques for immersive contexts

• Novel prototyping techniques supported by custom devices/tools

• Rapid prototyping using AI tools

• Prototyping techniques or technologies/plugins/frameworks designed specifically to support novice (non-technical) users in designing/prototyping XR

• User/case studies evaluating the above topics

• Speculative design evaluating the future of the above topics

Related but unlisted topics are also welcome. In addition to a presentation at the workshop, authors of all accepted submissions will be strongly encouraged to demonstrate their novel prototyping techniques in a video which will be shared with the workshop participants and on our workshop website.

We seek to tie these contributions together intellectually with unifying ideas, frameworks, and theories that provide common ground for discussing, analyzing, connecting, inventing, comparing, and making predictions about emerging new prototyping techniques as well as to identify gaps or opportunities for a future research agenda from gaps in a new taxonomy. To start the discussion concretely, we will use the notion of prototyping for XR experiences by novice/non-tech-savvy designers.

Workshop Questions for Discussion

• Do these prototyping techniques differ among VR, AR, MR, etc.? How? Why?

• What is common about these new prototyping techniques, and what things or ideas connect them? What differs? 

• Do they vary in importance based on the application, e.g., storytelling vs healthcare app?

• Is there a next generation of prototyping techniques or just a set of disparate developments? Are they unique to XR or inspired primarily by other arts like film or fields like engineering?

• Taking prototyping for XR experiences by novice/non-tech-savvy designers as a provisional starting point, is it possible to extend, expand, support, disagree with, or modify the initial XR prototyping techniques for novice designers' framework? or introduce alternative approaches?

• How can we predict, understand, and identify gaps in prototyping for XR experiences by novice/non-tech-savvy designers?

• Are there opportunities for new methods or tools inspired by gaps uncovered by this?

Workshop Schedule

Saturday, March 8th, 2025 - Time Zone: Saint-Malo, France UTC+1

Keynote Speaker

Keynote: Towards Systematic Design Methods for Probabilistic Virtual and Augmented Reality User Interfaces

Important Dates

• Abstract Deadline (optional but encouraged) December 29th, 2024, 23:59 AoE time

• Submission Deadline January 4th, 2025, 23:59 AoE time

• Notification Deadline January 13th, 2025, 23:59 AoE time

• Camera-Ready January 25th, 2025, 23:59 AoE time

Submission Information

Papers should be submitted via PCS: https://new.precisionconference.com

Submissions must be anonymized and in PDF format, in the VGTC format: TBD

All submissions will be reviewed by experts in the areas listed above. At least one author of each accepted submission must register for the workshop and IEEE VR 2025 conference. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to give a 10-minute presentation at the workshop, and encouraged to give a demonstration of their research as a video. Proceedings will be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Library. We will also host the papers on this site.

Potentially, these papers will be seeds of journal article contributions under a special issue through an arrangement with a Journal or a magazine.  This is to be confirmed soon.

Workshop Organizers