Multi-User Interactions in Immersive Smart Spaces

Immersive environments, such as XR labs, CAVEs, smart classrooms, and sensor-rich living spaces, are rapidly shifting from single-user systems to shared multi-user experiences. Yet current interactive technologies still struggle to recognize, differentiate, and meaningfully support several people at once, especially when balancing personalization, collaboration, privacy, and fairness. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in shaping the next generation of multi-user immersive smart spaces. Our goal is to understand how systems can:

• Sense and identify multiple co-located users,

• Interpret social and contextual dynamics between them, and

• Adapt interfaces and behaviors in ways that are inclusive, privacy-aware, and equitable.

Through lightning talks, discussions, and collaborative design activities, we will map open challenges, share diverse perspectives, and collectively outline a research agenda for multi-user interaction in immersive environments.

1. Welcome & framing
   – Short introduction to the workshop’s goals and key challenges.

2. Lightning talks
   – 2–3 minute introductions with one slide per participant.

3. Breakout sessions in small groups (depending on the number of participants)
   – Thematic clusters such as: Identification & Sensing, Social Dynamics & Shared Personalization,  and Ethics, Inclusion & Accessibility

4. Synthesis & futures
   – Groups share back, co-create future scenarios (storyboards, concept sketches, role-play prototypes).

5. Closing discussion
   – Collective reflection, identifying next steps (e.g., joint publications, datasets, follow-up SIG or community).