Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

6-2026

Abstract

The ways people remember and recall places reveal an invisible aspect of cultural heritage (CH), reflecting how individuals and communities relate to these places. Heritage is communal, emerging through collaboratively constructed narratives rather than individual records. To probe how people may share collective memories, we designed an immersive two-person workflow for collaboratively co-designing 3D artifacts and environments in virtual heritage locations, using Generative AI (GenAI) to instantiate these intangible memories. Observations of the co-creation process revealed that participants merged prompts and model placements when negotiating different perspectives. They used spatial operations to compose scenes, and also to express personal and embodied experiences of CH. When GenAI failed to meet their needs, participants engaged in creative appropriation, re-purposing unsatisfactory generated objects as sources of design inspiration to further shared narratives. While GenAI may have a homogenizing effect on CH expression, this work shows how people may overcome limitations in immersive collaborative workflows.

Keywords

Virtual Reality, Generative AI, Collaboration, Cultural Heritage

Discipline

Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

DIS '26: Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Singapore, June 13-17

First Page

371

Last Page

394

ISBN

9798400725630

Identifier

10.1145/3800645.3812950

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

Singapore

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3812950

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