This workshop will explore virtual companions using design fiction to anticipate ethical, aesthetic, and cultural implications, as well as how such design fiction can be evaluated in a systematic way. Participants will create speculative narratives to examine future interactions, stereotypes, and societal impact.

Virtual companions, a type of intelligent virtual agent (IVA), have become more common and advanced in the past years, driven by generative AI and large language models. There is a concern that commercial virtual companions may lead to ethical issues, particularly regarding privacy, user data, emotional impact, and stereotypical representations of e.g. gender. This concern has motivated us to propose a workshop exploring these questions with design fiction. Design fiction is a method for speculating about the future of technology and design, and it is well suited to investigate the development of virtual companions to and identify potential risks and opportunities.

Relevance of Topic

This workshop is relevant for conference attendees in two ways. First, design fiction is a useful method for exploring emerging technologies such as IVA’s, and trying this method together with others is a great way to see its many forms. Secondly, virtual companions are a growing sub-field of IVA with potentially severe ethical issues and therefore deserves attention from a range of viewpoints.

Objective

The objective of this workshop is to gather a community of IVA researchers who can continue the work on design fiction in future book and journal publications that the organizers plan to edit. Two themes that could be explored in this workshop are critiques and ethics; considering for example how an agent's appearances affect user trust, how the agent's visual appearance reinforces stereotypes, and reflect on how different cultures accept virtual agents. 

We welcome registrations (no submission required) from a broad range of disciplines such as engineering, computer science, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, art, and design. 

Register here: https://iva.acm.org/2025/registration/ 

We welcome submissions of research/position papers that are 2-4 pages long (including references). Submissions should be prepared in the “ACM Standard” format, more specifically, the “SigConf” format, see IVA Conference Call for Papers for details. We seek contributions from a range of design fiction topics in relation to IVA.  Topics include, but are not limited to: 

Evaluating Human-Agent Interactions

• Alternative Quantitative Questionnaires – Discussing existing questionnaires and constructs, proposing new ones.

• Domain Specific Quantitative Questionnaires – Developing domain-specific questionnaires for different applications (e.g., healthcare, education, etc…)

• Qualitative Methodology – Presenting and promoting qualitative methodology to gather richer insights from users 

• Ethical Considerations – Developing questionnaires to assess fairness, transparency, privacy, and security in Socially Interactive Agents

Design of Virtual Agents

• Cultural differences in acceptance of IVAs

• Visual representation of agents and how that influences the user interactions

• Speculative explorations of the futures of agents, what the interactions with and design of them could be

• Interactions with agents and how they impact users

Workshop papers must be submitted in PDF format via email to hashmati@chalmers.se by the deadline. Please write IVA-WS-FUTURE in the subject line.  In addition to the paper's content, the submission should include a section at the end that outlines the authors' interest and motivation around the workshop's topic. 

Submission Deadline: July 22nd 2025

Notification of Acceptance: July 28th 2025