HCC: Small: Mitigating Online Risks: Designing Social VR to Prevent New Forms of Online Harassment

该项目调查人们在在线社交空间中遭受骚扰的新的、潜在的破坏性方式，以设计新的、更安全的社交技术来保护、促进信任和缓解新出现的在线风险。它关注社交虚拟现实(VR)中新出现的在线骚扰形式，即新颖且日益流行的3D虚拟空间，在这些空间中，多个用户通过VR头盔显示器、同步语音对话、跟踪人的身体运动的化身以及模拟的触摸和抓取功能相互交互。随着在线社交空间朝着更自然、更身临其境的互动方向发展，社交虚拟现实成为疫情时代内外社交活动和联系的重要和受欢迎的媒介。通过这种方式，该项目直接促进了公众对让VR研究和创新促进人类活动的兴趣。它通过创建更安全的在线社交空间并促进这些空间中更健康的互动动态，为普通公众的社会和情感福祉做出贡献。该项目采取主动的方法来研究和设计新的VR系统，以满足不同用户的新颖和安全的社交互动。它正致力于通过三个阶段积极预防在线环境和体验中新的、可能更具破坏性的骚扰：(1)使用自动在线数据收集、参与式观察和采访，探索人们如何在社交VR中体验和应对骚扰；(2)通过大规模在线调查对新的在线骚扰形式进行理论和建模；以及(3)通过原型制作、参与式设计过程和社区部署，生成以用户为中心的设计模式和指南，以保护用户免受新形式的在线骚扰。总体而言，该项目预计将促进有关如何解释风险和减轻新形式的在线骚扰的知识，这些骚扰是针对新技术和社会体验而出现的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project investigates new and potentially disruptive ways that people experience harassment in online social spaces, in order to design novel and safer social technologies to protect, promote trust, and mitigate emerging online risks. It focuses on newly emerging forms of online harassment in that are occurring in social Virtual Reality (VR), that is, novel and increasingly popular 3D virtual spaces, where multiple users interact with one another through VR head-mounted displays, synchronous voice conversation, avatars that track a person’s body movements, and simulated touching and grabbing features. As online social spaces evolve towards more natural and immersive interaction, social VR grows as an important and popular medium for social activities and connections in and beyond the era of the pandemic. In this way, the project directly promotes public interest in making VR research and innovation facilitate human activity. It contributes to the general public's social and emotional well-being by creating safer online social spaces and promoting healthier interaction dynamics in these spaces. This project takes a proactive approach to examining and designing new VR systems for diverse users’ novel and safe social interactions. It is working toward active prevention of new and potentially more disruptive harassment in online environments and experiences through three phases: (1) explore how people experience and cope with harassment in social VR, using automatic online data scraping, participatory observations, and interviews; (2) theorize and model new forms of online harassment using a large-scale online survey; and (3) generate user-centered design patterns and guidelines to protect users from new forms of online harassment through prototyping, a participatory design process, and community deployment. Overall, the project is expected to advance knowledge about how to explicate risks and mitigate new forms of online harassment, which emerge in response to new technologies and social experiences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.