Risk of Harm in VR Dating from the Perspective of Women and LGBTQIA+ Stakeholders

TL;DR

This paper explores potential harms in VR dating for women and LGBTQIA+ users, emphasizing the importance of stakeholder involvement in designing safer virtual romantic environments.

Contribution

It presents participatory workshops with marginalized stakeholders to identify specific VR dating harms and informs preventative design strategies.

Findings

Concerns about harm during virtual-physical interaction transitions

Risks related to expectations of sexual interaction in VR

Stakeholder insights inform safer VR dating design

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) dating introduces novel opportunities for romantic interactions, but it also raises concerns about new harms that typically occur separately in traditional dating apps and general-purpose social VR environments. Given the subjectivity in which VR dating experiences can be considered harmful it is imperative to involve user stakeholders in anticipating harms and formulating preventative designs. Towards this goal with conducted participatory design workshops with 17 stakeholders identified as women and/or LGBTQIA+; demographics that are at elevated risk of harm in online dating and social VR. Findings reveal that participants are concerned with two categories of harm in VR dating: those that occur through the transition of interaction across virtual and physical modalities, and harms stemming from expectations of sexual interaction in VR.