Too Immersive for the Field? Addressing Safety Risks in Extended Reality User Studies

TL;DR

As XR technologies move into real-world settings, safety risks increase, requiring clear guidelines and strategies to ensure safe, inclusive, and responsible user studies outside traditional labs.

Contribution

This paper identifies safety challenges in XR field studies and proposes practical strategies for conducting safe, inclusive, and responsible research across diverse environments.

Findings

Physical risks are heightened in unsupervised XR studies.

Safety considerations are often overlooked in field testing.

Clear safety guidelines are needed for responsible XR research.

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR) technologies are increasingly tested outside the lab, in homes, schools, and public spaces. While this shift enables more realistic user insights, it also introduces safety challenges that are often overlooked. Physical risks, psychological distress, and accessibility issues can be increased in field studies and unsupervised testing, such as at home or crowdsourced trials. Without clear instructions, safety decisions are left to individual researchers, raising questions of responsibility and consistency. This position paper outlines key safety risks in XR user testing beyond the lab and calls for practical strategies that are needed to help researchers run XR studies in a safe and inclusive way across different environments.