Creating Personalized Realities That Connect People's Perceptions of Reality

Driven by advances in Extended Reality, Ubiquitous Computing, and AI, personalized services are increasingly interwoven into people’s everyday lives. Such Ubiquitous Personalization (UP) may enable more efficient interaction and equitable information access. However, the Personalized Realities (PR) such UP creates may also diminish shared experiences and isolate individuals in fragmented realities. Additionally, by potentially mediating people’s full reality, UP grants unprecedented control to system designers, enabling both beneficial and manipulative practices. In my dissertation, I thus investigate how responsible UP systems in single- and multi-user contexts may create beneficial PRs while mitigating harmful implications. Through mixed-methods research combining conceptual frameworks, technical prototypes, and controlled user studies, I systematically study responsible UP systems and provide concrete examples for their implementation. My research aims to provide theoretical and practical foundations enabling researchers and practitioners to design, evaluate, and deploy useful PR experiences that connect people’s realities instead of isolating them.