The metaverse represents a post-reality universe that seamlessly merges physical reality with digital virtuality. It provides a continuous and immersive social networking environment, enabling multi-user engagement and interaction through Extended Reality (XR) technologies, which include Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). As a novel solution distinct from traditional methods such as mobile-based applications, the technical affordance of XR technologies in shaping multi-user social experiences remains a complex, multifaceted, and multivariate issue that has not yet been thoroughly explored. Additionally, there is a notable absence of mature frameworks and guidelines for designing and developing these multi-user socio-technical systems. Enhancing multi-user social engagement through these technologies remains a significant research challenge. This systematic review aims to address this gap by establishing an analytical framework guided by the PRISMA protocol. It analyzes 88 studies from various disciplines, including computer science, social science, psychology, and the arts, to define the mechanisms and effectiveness of XR technologies in multi-user social engagement. Quantitative methods such as descriptive statistics, correlation statistics, and text mining are used to examine the manifestation of mechanisms, potential system factors, and their effectiveness. Meanwhile, qualitative case studies identify specific measures by which system factors enhance multi-user social engagement. The study provides a pioneering framework for theoretical research and offers practical insights for developing cross-spatiotemporal co-present activities in the metaverse. It also promotes critical reflection on the evolving relationship between humans and this emerging digital universe.

Recent technical advancement has driven the boundary between the physical reality and digital virtuality to diminish significantly. As part of the emerging trend, existing research leverages a synergized use of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) and virtual reality (VR) to create compelling hybrid user experience. However, current state-of-the-art literature indicates a lack of coherent architecture for seamlessly integrating these two siloed technology stacks, thus hindering full-fledged mixed and extended reality applications. In this article, we first conducted a comprehensive literature review and identified key design themes and different technical affordances of RFID within VR context; in reflection of our findings, we hence proposed an overarching architecture to facilitate swift and flexible composition of RFID and VR; Three use cases were further established using the proposed architecture to both demonstrate its technical feasibility and qualitatively assess RFID’s augmentation over conventional VR applications. This exploratory research intends to offer some preliminary design knowledge and insights for designing and developing RFID-augmented VR applications, open up opportunities for further discussion and research interest in this area, thus ultimately contributing to more immersive, interactive and informative user experience.

Gesture elicitation is a fundamental method for constructing gesture-based interactive systems. Existing research has shown that this method allows users’ knowledge to serve as a design basis, minimizing biases that may occur from relying excessively on an expert’s preference. However, how to conduct effective gesture elicitation studies remains an uncertain and open-ended issue. Through a thorough literature review, this study aims to identify important aspects that have significant impacts on the implementation of the elicitation study. The main findings of this paper are as follows: (1) Factors such as the choice of participants, referents, elicitation techniques, elicitation environments, and tasks can have a significant impact on the results of gesture elicitation; (2) Researchers have proposed various metrics for selecting gesture sets and evaluating their effects, but there is still debate over the sufficiency of these metrics; (3) Various methods have been proposed to improve gesture elicitation research, but there is still a lack of broad consensus on the best practices for gesture elicitation research, how to evaluate and report results, and how to compare results across studies. These findings indicate that gesture elicitation has become a valuable research and practical tool, but further study is needed to utilize it better.

Mixed reality (MR) games refer to games that integrate physical entities with digitally mediated contents. Currently, it entails game creators to integrate heterogeneous virtual and physical components, which is often time-consuming and labor-intensive, without the support of a coherent technology stack. The underlying technodiversity manifested by the research corpus suggests a complicated, multi-dimensional design space that goes beyond merely technical concerns. In this research, we adopted a research-through-design approach and proposed an MR game technology stack that facilitates flexible, low-code game development. As design grounding, we first surveyed 34 state-of-the-art studies, and results were synergized into three different spectra of technological affordances, respectively activity range, user interface and feedback control, to inform our next design process. We then went through an iterative prototyping phase and implemented an MR game development toolset. A co-design workshop was conducted, where we invited 15 participants to try the prototype tools and co-ideate the potential use scenarios for the proposed technology stack. First-hand user feedback was collected via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. As a result, four conceptual game designs with three major design implications were generated, which conjointly reflect a broader understanding on MR gameful experience and contribute fresh insights to this emerging research domain.

Music has always been an important way of expressing ourselves. Creating music from bodily interaction has gained lots of attention: Various gestures, body touch, movements of hand and foot are used as inputs for creating music. The traditional identification and sensing technology, passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, can also be turned into a music player textile for creating music with simple touch or gesture on clothing. When the player touches a specific integrated circuit (IC) copper pad with finger, the unique ID is read by the reader and translated to music via our music software. With this preliminary version of the music player textile, it is possible to play drum and piano. In the future, the technology can be applied to daily clothing for educational musical purposes such as teaching music to kids, as well as professional musical purposes such as performers (showmen and hosts) and lecturers to have playful performances.