With this first paper of my PhD, published at CHI’23, we explored how Extended Reality (XR) could be used to manipulate users’ memory, and what potential benefits and risks could be associated with such manipulations.

To achieve this broad exploration, we conducted speculative design workshops, involving XR researchers and cognitive psychology researchers. We used speculative design methods to envision future scenarios while still grounding the workshop in our current understanding of memory processes and XR capabilities. From the results of the workshops, we define XR Memory Manipulations (XRMMs), and present three classes of manipulations, which differ in terms of technology (AR, VR) and impact on memory (influencing quality of memories, inducing forgetting, distorting memories). We raise ethical concerns and discuss opportunities of perceptual and memory manipulations in XR.

Have a look at the paper here!

Examples of scenarios of XRMMs, presented and discussed in the paper:

AR Eraser

In this scenario, someone uses AR glasses to hide in their environment all the elements associated with their former partner, which they want to forget faster.

Buy a friend

In this scenario, a VR social media is used to revisit and share immersive reconstructions of past events. In this scenario, the VR reconstructions can be modified by users. The persons who revisit the VR memory might later confuse the real memory and the altered VR reconstruction, leading to the creation of a false memory.