I am pleased to announce that Dr. Guo Freeman of Clemson University will be our keynote speaker at the IDEATExR workshop for IEEEVR ’24 in Orlando Florida.
Her talk, Designing Inclusive and Safe Social VR Systems to Protect Marginalized Communities, will be given at 13:30 on Saturday March 16th, 2024. The abstract for the talk and Dr. Freeman’s biography follow.
Abstract
In recent years, the growing popularity of commercial social VR platforms such as VR Chat, RecRoom, and Meta Horizon Worlds is dramatically transforming how people meet, interact, play, and collaborate online. These platforms have drawn aspects from traditional multiplayer online games and 3D virtual worlds where users engage in various immersive experiences, interactive activities, and choices through avatar-based online representations. However, social VR also demonstrates specific nuances, including full/partial body tracked avatars, synchronous voice conversations, and simulated touching and grabbing features. These novel characteristics have led to varied issues regarding inclusion and safety, including greater instances of online harassment and new power dynamics compared to traditional 3D virtual worlds/online gaming or single-user VR. In this talk, Dr. Guo Freeman will introduce her recent research on novel opportunities and emerging risks in social VR. She will explain her ongoing work on leveraging innovative technologies, such as AI-based moderation and consent mechanisms, for proactively mitigating said risks in social VR. She will also highlight potential future directions for designing safer, inclusive, and more supportive social VR systems to especially protect marginalized communities such as women, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ individuals.
Guo Freeman Biography
Dr. Guo Freeman is a Dean’s Associate Professor in Human-Centered Computing at Clemson University. At Clemson, she directs the Gaming and Mediated Experience Lab (CUGAME). Her work focuses on how interactive technologies such as multiplayer online games, esports, live streaming, and social VR shape interpersonal relationships and group behavior; and how to design safe, inclusive, and supportive social VR spaces to combat emergent harassment risks. Her research is also uniquely driven by her focus on marginalized technology users due to their gender, race, sexuality, age, and disability, including women, LGBTQ individuals, ethnic minorities, minors, and persons with disabilities. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and won 13 Best Paper/Honorable Mentions Awards (top 3%-5%) at ACM SIGCHI venues. She has secured $20.4 million in external grant funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), US Army, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. She especially dedicates to broadening women’s and minorities’ participation in computing and was a Grace Hopper Women in Computing Faculty Mentor. She is also a highly dedicated member of the ACM SIGCHI community and has taken numerous leading editorial and organizational roles in SIGCHI throughout her career, including: ACM CHI PLAY 2024 General Chair; ACM GROUP 2025 General Chair; ACM CHI PLAY Steering Committee member; ACM CHI PLAY Papers Chair in 2022 and 2023; and ACM IMX 2021 Technical Program/Papers Chair.