THEMATIC SESSION #23

Maria Di Summa

STIIMA, CNR, Bari-Amendola, Italy

• maria.disumma@cnr.it

Marina Ricci

STIIMA, CNR, Bari-Amendola, Italy

• marina.ricci@stiima.cnr.it

The design of XR environments is evolving rapidly from the construction of visual scenarios to the development of multisensory experiential architectures. Designing for XR today means bringing together space, interaction, perception, and technology to create immersive, coherent, and high-performing experiences.

This thematic session explores the design of multisensory virtual environments as an integrated design practice, with particular attention to methodologies, workflows, tools, and applied case studies emerging from both academia and industry. The session investigates how the deliberate manipulation of sensory cues—such as visual, auditory, and haptic stimuli—can be embedded within XR design processes to structure experiences that enhance presence, embodiment, engagement, and interaction quality. Virtual environments are considered not just narrative settings but designed systems in which every sensory element contributes to the overall user experience.

There is a dedicated focus on inclusive and adaptive design, examining how multisensory XR environments can be configured to support users with sensory differences or impairments through customisable, evidence-based, user-centred approach.

The list of topics includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Multisensory XR environment design and spatial/sensory orchestration in immersive systems;
• Multisensory design strategies integrated into XR production workflows, including development pipelines (concept, prototyping, testing, and iteration);
• Design integration of emerging multisensory technologies and paradigms (e.g., haptics/pseudo-haptics, crossmodal perception, olfactory/gustatory interaction, wearables, adaptive and personalised systems);
• Immersive soundscape design and spatial audio strategies;
• Perception-driven interaction design in XR;
• Prototyping tools and rapid iteration methods for multisensory XR experiences;
• Tools, metrics, and UX evaluation frameworks for assessing design effectiveness in real-world contexts;
• Adaptive and personalised XR systems, including user-centred configuration approaches;
• Accessibility-by-design and inclusive multisensory environments;
• Industry case studies and real-world deployments, including commercial applications in training, entertainment, retail, culture heritage, healthcare, and serious games;
• Design guidelines, best practices, and methodological frameworks for multisensory XR;
• Interdisciplinary collaboration between designers, developers, researchers, and stakeholders.

Maria Di Summa received her Ph.D. and her undergraduate degree from Politecnico di Bari. She has been a Researcher at STIIMA-CNR since 2010. Her research activity focuses on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality, with particular emphasis on interaction and multisensory design through innovative perceptual and interactive techniques for immersive experiences. Her work further addresses people and posture tracking, intelligent systems, AI paradigms for behavior learning and understanding, feature extraction for pattern recognition, and anomaly detection methodologies. She has been actively involved in several Regional, National, and International research projects in the fields of advanced manufacturing, ambient assisted living, rail transportation, and smart cities, contributing in various scientific and technical roles. She has served as Chair and member of the organizing and scientific committees of several international conferences. She also serves as a technical-scientific expert for the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE).

Marina Ricci has been a postdoc at STIIMA-CNR since 2024. She earned her Ph.D. in Industry 4.0 in 2024 with a dissertation entitled “Designing next-generation retail experiences via virtual reality and pseudo-haptics”, which was awarded as the best national doctoral thesis (Virtual Prototyping section) by the Italian Association of Design and Methods for Industrial Engineering (ADM). Her main research interests lie in interaction and multisensory design, with a particular focus on the use of innovative perceptual and interactive techniques to design experiences mediated by virtual and augmented reality. From 2022 to 2023, she was a Visiting Ph.D. Student at TU Delft, investigating pseudo-haptics in online retail settings. In 2025, she received a CNR Short-Term Mobility Fellowship to conduct research at UCL on visual metaphors for cross-modal communication. Since 2021, she has contributed to international design and HCI conferences in several roles, spanning from track co-chair for DRS 2026 to member of program committees for EuroXR 2024-2025, ISMAR 2021-2023, and ACM SUI 2026.