With growing investment in consumer augmented reality (AR) headsets and glasses, wearable AR is moving from niche applications to everyday use. However, current research primarily examines AR in controlled settings, offering limited insights into its use in real-world daily life. To address this gap, we adopt a digital ethnographic approach, analysing 27 hours of 112 YouTube videos featuring early adopters. These videos capture usage ranging from continuous periods of hours to intermittent use over weeks and months. Our analysis shows that currently, wearable AR is primarily used for media consumption and gaming. While productivity is a desired use case, frequent use is constrained by current hardware limitations and the nascent application ecosystem. Users seek continuity in their digital experience, desiring functionalities similar to those on smartphones, tablets, or computers. We propose implications for everyday AR development that promote adoption while ensuring safe, ethical, and socially-aware integration into daily life.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713572
Creating expressive and realistic motion animations is a challenging task. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have emerged to address this challenge, offering the capability to synthesize human motion animations from text prompts. However, the effective integration of AI-generated motion into professional designer workflows remains uncertain. This study proposes MoWa, an authoring tool designed to refine AI-generated human motions to meet professional standards. A formative study with six professional motion designers identified the strengths and weaknesses of AI-generated motions. To address these weaknesses, MoWa utilizes latent space to enhance the expressiveness of motions, making them suitable for use in professional workflows. A user study involving twelve professional motion designers was conducted to evaluate MoWa's effectiveness in refining AI-generated motions. The results indicated that MoWa streamlines the motion design process and improves the quality of the outcomes. These findings suggest that incorporating latent space into motion design tasks can improve efficiency.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714253
Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) have recently gained popularity as streamers using computer-generated avatars and real-time motion capture to create distinct virtual identities. While prior research has explored how VTubers construct virtual personas and engage audiences, little attention has been given to viewers’ reactions when virtual and real identities blur—what we refer to as "seams." To address this gap, we conducted a case study on PLAVE, a popular Korean VTuber Kpop idol group, interviewing 24 of their fans. Our findings identified two main sources of seams: technical glitches and identity collapses, where VTubers act inconsistently with their virtual personas, revealing aspects of their real selves. These seams played a pivotal role in shaping diverse fan engagements, with some valuing authenticity linked to real identities, while others prioritized the coherence of virtual personas. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of seams in shaping viewer experiences.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714218
While exaggerated facial expressions in cartoon avatars can enhance emotional communication in social virtual reality (VR), they risk triggering the uncanny valley effect. Our research reveals that this effect varies significantly across different emotions. In Study 1 (N=30), participants evaluated scaled facial expressions during simulated VR conversations. We found that expression exaggeration had opposing effects: it decreased facial realism for joy, surprise, and disgust due to overly dramatic mouth movements, while enhancing realism for fear, sadness, and anger—emotions that rely on upper facial expressions typically constrained by HMD pressure. Based on these findings, we developed a region-specific facial expression exaggeration strategy that enhances under-expressed upper facial features while maintaining natural lower facial movements. Study 2 (N=20) validated this approach, demonstrating enhanced emotional intensity and contagion for negative emotions while mitigating the uncanny valley effect. Our research provides practical guidelines for optimizing avatar-mediated emotional communication in social VR environments.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713688
VTubing, the practice of live streaming using virtual avatars, has gained worldwide popularity among streamers seeking to maintain anonymity. While previous research has primarily focused on the social and cultural aspects of VTubing, there is a noticeable lack of studies examining the practical challenges VTubers face in creating and operating their avatars. To address this gap, we surveyed VTubers’ equipment and expanded the live-streaming design space by introducing six new dimensions related to avatar creation and control. Additionally, we conducted interviews with 16 professional VTubers to comprehensively explore their practices, strategies, and challenges throughout the VTubing process. Our findings reveal that VTubers face significant burdens compared to real-person streamers due to fragmented tools and the multi-tasking nature of VTubing, leading to unique workarounds. Finally, we summarize these challenges and propose design opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of VTubing.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714107
Extensive research has focused on community-based moderation involving selected or volunteer moderators. The ``votekick'' system represents a democratized approach allowing all users to participate in moderation. Despite its widespread use in online gaming and social VR platforms, votekicking remains underexplored. This research studies how users use and perceive votekicking in VRChat, a leading social VR platform. Through thematic analysis of discussions from the Reddit community r/VRChat, our findings reveal that votekicking serves to cope with misconduct and enforce group-specific rules, but it also perpetuates toxicity such as materializing community-level biases. While praised for its immediacy and clear messaging against unacceptable behavior, votekicking's effectiveness is hindered by its reactive nature, consensus challenges, and decision-making complexities. This research contributes to broader discussions on the limitations and advantages of direct community involvement in moderation and suggests practical design improvements to address the challenges associated with votekicking.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713577
Despite the significant increase in popularity of Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), research on the unique dynamics of viewer-VTuber parasocial relationships is nascent. This work investigates how English-speaking viewers grieved VTubers whose identities are no longer used, an interesting context as the \textit{nakanohito} (i.e., the person behind the VTuber identity) is usually alive post-retirement and might ``reincarnate'' as another VTuber. We propose a typology for VTuber retirements and analyzed 13,655 Reddit posts and comments spanning nearly three years using mixed-methods. Findings include how viewers coped using methods similar to when losing loved ones, alongside novel coping methods reflecting different attachment styles. Although emotions like sadness, shock, concern, disapproval, confusion, and love decreased with time, regret and loyalty showed opposite trends. Furthermore, viewers' reactions situated a VTuber identity within a community of content creators and viewers. We also discuss design implications alongside implications on the VTuber ecosystem and future research directions.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714216