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.
@article{arxiv.2602.23497,
title = {Too Immersive for the Field? Addressing Safety Risks in Extended Reality User Studies},
author = {Tanja Kojić and Sara Srebot and Maurizio Vergari and Mirta Moslavac and Maximilian Warsinke and Sebastian Möller and Lea Skorin-Kapov and Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.23497},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Paper presented at the Mensch und Computer 2025 (MuC 2025)