Jan Henry Belz

Jan Henry Belz

In virtual reality environments, the alignment of perceptual modalities is crucial for immersion and presence. In the AR domain, it is difficult to create such alignments because elements in the physical world are often beyond the user's control. However, recent advances in generative AI enable on-demand content creation, enabling highly reactive AR experiences. Combined with contextual information about the physical world, it has become possible to design experiences that seamlessly align with the user's environment. In this reflection paper, I emphasize the importance of "synchronized" realities for context-aware AR experiences, particularly in mobility scenarios. I present several examples of existing synchronized experiences and examine their commonalities and distinctions. Finally, I discuss opportunities and pitfalls of synchronizing AR experiences with the physical world.

Julian Britten, Jan Henry Belz

Through the rise of the right-to-repair movement, along with supporting legislation, we are currently witnessing an attitude shift in favor of repairing. This opens up various opportunities for personal fabrication research. Although the field has shifted more towards sustainable practices, repair is rarely the main focus. In this paper, we want to make the case for repair-centered fabrication research as a timely, relevant, impactful, and therefore meaningful topic. We describe potential avenues researchers could pursue by defining repair as a five-step process, including issue identification, exploring solutions, acquiring materials, performing the repair, and testing, and discuss challenges and opportunities for each step.