Collaborative XR Research Exploratory Report
Published: 13 March 2024
This report showcases the learnings from a recent workshop in coordination with a bid to develop collaborations, explore new and interdisciplinary methods, and lay foundations for future joint investigative projects in XR research.
Collaborative XR Research between Social Science & Computer Science
The Extended Reality (XR) technologies are a growing concern in social spaces. As developers improve technical capabilities, consumers increase their demand, and organisations turn more attention towards implementation of XR across various elements of social life, it is vital that social science researchers and practitioners have a firm grasp of the impact of these technologies, as well as a seat at the table when decisions are made.
In a bid to develop collaborations, explore new and interdisciplinary methods, and lay foundations for future joint investigative projects in XR research, a workshop was organised by the Digital Society and Economy Interdisciplinary Research Theme in the College of Social Sciences with the School of Computer Science.
The workshop ran in February 2024. The workshop was framed around two presentations from the School of Computer Science, and for each presentation, the 14 participants were split into two groups for discussion. Following these two sections, and a brief presentation on a potential upcoming cross-disciplinary grant opportunity, a final discussion centred around the key takeaways as well as what a fruitful research collaboration between social sciences and computer science at University of Glasgow might look like.
A publicly-available version of the slide deck can be found here.
Presentation 1:
Prof Stephen Brewster drew on the ViAjeRo project (‘Traveller’ in Spanish) that seeks to radically improve all passenger journeys by facilitating the use of immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality (together called XR) to support entertainment, work and collaboration when on the move.
Presentation 2:
Dr Mark McGill presented his AUGSOC ERC Starting Grant, starting in mid 2024, with the aim of exploring the societal impact that mass adoption of everyday Augmented Reality (AR) glasses and headwear will have in facilitating the Augmented Society - a world where spatial computing and mediated perception become the norm.
This briefing note summarises the key questions discussed, collected under four themes.
Theme 1: What are the implications, and impacts on social worlds, of XR technologies being employed in public spaces?
Theme 2: What are the real-world social harms of XR technology?
Theme 3: What are the issues about social acceptability of XR use in shared public spaces?
Theme 4: How might we investigate XR in social spaces through interdisciplinary research?
First published: 13 March 2024