Description:

Extended Reality (XR) has the power to bring distant, invisible, or abstract environmental challenges into immediate focus — whether it’s visualizing carbon emissions, mapping global supply chains, or revealing the impact of agricultural runoff in our ocean. XR allows users to explore places they may never visit, time-travel to eras when indigenous communities lived in harmony with nature, step into the perspectives of non-human species, and safely develop skills for extreme environments.

This track challenges your team to harness XR as a tool for driving environmental awareness, action, and sustainable impact. How can immersive experiences inform, inspire, and empower individuals and communities to address pressing environmental issues?

How Might We...

• …design immersive experiences that foster hope, agency, and a sense of responsibility toward sustainability goals?
• …use XR to drive real-world action on a specific environmental challenge?
• …create XR tools for communities directly affected by extreme climate events like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires?
• …use XR to help people who live far from a coastline understand the importance of protecting the marine resources they rely on?
• …embody a plant, animal, or non-living thing to experience the impacts of deforestation?
• …apply XR to initiatives that promote sustainable development and economic prosperity, such as Blue Economy programs?

Let’s imagine ecological, social, and economic sustainability through XR lenses — where will you take us?

Written by Erika Woolsey, Visiting Scholar at Stanford VHIL