From Equity to the Metaverse: The Future of Experience Design

The digital revolution created the foundation for user research. Today's evolving modality landscape—web3, blockchain technology, VR, hybrid—will push UX and design thinkers to adapt and evolve their practices. Critical to this conversation are inclusion, equity, and belonging. This panel brings together researchers working at the front-lines of these issues.

Specifically, this panel explores:

• What we mean when we use terms like "metaverse" or "hybrid modality"
• How researchers from social and hard sciences are planning for these changes
• What steps must be taken to ensure equity and access for all
• Questions you can begin asking to prepare for these experience futures

Transcript

Stacey Houston:
Hello everyone. I am Stacey and I'm a product manager for the Metaverse Equity team. I'll get into some intros for us a little bit later. We'll talk a little bit about how we came to work in the Metaverse, which will be the focus of our conversation today to talk about the future of design. But I first wanted to do a grounding for us and what is the Metaverse and what do we mean when we say the Metaverse throughout our chat today. So before I jump into that, just briefly, I'm going to be moderating joined by Camela and Yao who sit on teams adjacent to mine, and I'm going to be a sort of moderator panelist. So as you see me jumping in, don't worry, I'm not sort of overstepping my bounds as moderator. We sort of all align that I would also jump in as well with some of my own thoughts and you'll learn a little bit about my unique position as a former researcher in just a bit that I think brings some interesting perspective to some of the questions today.

Awesome. So what is the Metaverse? I think broadly speaking, we are thinking about the Metaverse as this long-term vision of being an embodied form of the internet, which offers a feeling of presence of being together even when you're not. In order to reach or achieve this embodied form of the internet, it'll emerge when we empower people to easily travel, share, create, and connect across virtual destinations. Spaces and presence and continuity are defining characteristics of the Metaverse and a shared sense of space and presence are what make the meta Metaverse unique. It builds on the web today's sort of sense of seamless connection and makes virtual spaces tangible and helps people feel like they're right with people as they explore and experience new things together. I think one of the first things that come to mind when people think about the Metaverse is avatars and avatars are a core way people will embody a feeling of presence and express their identity or identities in the Metaverse.

People can also build their own private spaces. Today, currently one of our products is Horizon World, where people can build their own spaces and worlds that allow them to interact and be present with people, again, in this embodied form of the internet. And this space can become a representation of people's identity, showcasing what matters to them, and it's also an active space where people can invite family and friends or even strangers and new friends, new and emerging friends to do activities like talk together, play games, watch TV, et cetera. So I know it's big picture, but this is sort of broadly some of the characteristics and qualities of the Metaverse that we'll be talking about today, which is part of the future that we'll be exploring as we think about what designs should look like. So with that, I want to start some of our questions and again, as promise, dive into a little bit of some intros by way of talking about our journey into the Metaverse. So Camela and Yao, maybe Camela, I'll start with you. Can you tell me about your career journey to working on the Metaverse?

Camela Logan:
Hi everybody. I'm so excited to be here today. My name is Dr. Camela Logan. I joined Meta in 2016 and at that time I joined a team that was focused on developing our live video technology. But even since that time, well before the Metaverse was even something that we were talking about as often as we are today, I was always pushing forward efforts both within my team as well as across product teams to evolve our product development processes and more specifically identifying ways to ensure that our product development processes and the experiences that we were designing for our users by way of those processes were more inclusive and equitable. And so I went about accomplishing this by leveraging my background, which is in cultural anthropology and intercultural communication to show various teams how not just communities in different regions of the world, but even sub-communities within regions that my team members might be more familiar with, were holding very distinct experiences and along with that, different needs when they're using our products.

So in 2020 I co-founded a central team within Meta that focuses on equity and I also co-founded a council designed to support researchers across the company that were working on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I co-founded it alongside of our panelist here, Stacey. And as a central team, we focus on both creating more equitable product experiences for various users, but also we focus on evolving the product development process more generally for product teams across the company so that they can design more equitable product experiences. And I made my way to the Metaverse specifically through my work engaging with teams in the Metaverse to identify different topic areas that we're very critical to focus on to ensure that when they're developing the Metaverse, they're developing it in a way that is allowing for more inclusive and equitable experiences. And that has been really exciting to have that opportunity to do that in this early stage of the development of the Metaverse.

Stacey Houston:
Thank you, Camela. We're all thankful to you across the company and I'd say broadly across the industry for the pioneering work that you're doing. Yao, what about you? Tell us about your career journey to working on the Metaverse.

Yao Ding:
Sure. Thank you, Stacey. Thank you for having me. So I joined Meta about two years ago and I currently lead accessibility user research on Meta's central accessibility team. What I do is really about giving a voice to our accessibility users to make sure that their voice is heard and becomes an integral part of our product design and development processes. I conduct user studies, I directly engage participants who have various accessibility needs and I also support UX researchers who may be newer to accessibility by providing training resources. And I hope I'm helping them feel more equipped and confident going about accessibility studies. And at Meta we are really keen to create the Metaverse experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind. I work really closely with Reality Labs teams to understand our accessibility users and create accessible experiences. And I think it's safe to say that this area is the most exciting research area I've studied in.

Stacey Houston:
Awesome. Also safe to say, I'm really honored to be in the presence of both of you and think that our conversation's going to be great just based on background and experience. So who am I? I joined the company about, I guess at the same time y'all did back in 2020 and I joined as a quantitative UX researcher coming from academia. I was teaching in a criminology department before I joined the company and got my PhD in sociology and had been studying racial disparities in various spaces, obviously working in a criminology department was thinking about the criminal justice system, I also thought about education and health systems as well.

And so when I came in, I almost immediately started working on racial justice strategy for the company. And one of the outputs of that strategy, sort of similar to what Camela was mentioning, was a focus on creating and standing up equity product teams such that we could start to really infuse equitable product development into the product experience itself rather than doing it on a volunteer basis or as things emerged in society that sort of necessitated working in these spaces, we always wanted to have these constant focus and sort of infuse it into the way that we build.

So I got to co-found the first product equity team on Instagram, and after sitting on that team as a PM, or sorry UXR PM hybrid, just based on the sort of background that I had and involvement in the overall strategy, I decided that it was time to officially make the switch over into PMing. And so after about two years of sitting on the team at the same time as some leaders were beginning to structure an equity team in the Metaverse, I was presented the opportunity to come over and start thinking about equity at these beginning stages and kind of recreating and co-found a new team thinking about equity in the Metaverse.

And I jumped at that opportunity. So now I lead product equity for the Metaverse team and I'm working closely with wonderful researchers like Yao and Camela to make sure the Metaverse is an inclusive place for everyone. So what does that look like? How are we thinking about doing that I think is what this conversation is all about. And what should our forward looking perspective be as we think about these new and emerging technologies in their intersection with inclusive design and human-centered design. So the first question I have for you, Camela and Yao and for myself also is today, what are some of the biggest user research areas that people should explore in order to make sure they're putting people first in the Metaverse? And I'll start with you Yao.

Yao Ding:
I think there are two really biggest areas accessibility research should be focused on in the Metaverse. One is understanding how people with disabilities access the Metaverse, how to build a Metaverse that's born accessible, and people with disabilities are not left behind. If we look at the history of the web and mobile, more often than not, accessibility has been an afterthought. And now as we enter the Metaverse era, we want to get ahead of the curve. I think early we'll start building the needed infrastructure early. Although we're still years away from the full realization of the Metaverse, we're being proactive and aiming to build the Metaverse accessible in the beginning.

We need to think really hard on questions like, what accessibility solutions should be built into AR, VR? How to make the Metaverse compatible with people who are using assisted technologies? And the other area is kind of exploring new possibilities that Metaverse bring about for the disability community for instance. And as many of you may have seen in visionary demos or even sci-fi movies like AR glasses, offering speech to text for deaf people or translation for people speaking different languages, image recognition for blind people, or the concept of VR used in vocational training for people with cognitive disabilities who may need more time getting accustomed to a new work environment and a new daily routine. So there are just so many possibilities that Metaverse can help unlock and it's exciting.

Stacey Houston:
Yeah, I love that point you made about not being an afterthought and getting the opportunity to think about this in the very early foundational stages of the future. It's often the case that, as you mentioned, we're sort of going back and thinking about how we fix things and instead we get to build them in from the very beginning. So I think that necessitates a new way of thinking about what our research looks like that's maybe more forward thinking and plays into some of what you're talking about with respect to how can these new technologies actually help us in answering questions in ways that we couldn't before. Love that. Thank you. Camela, over to you. What are some of the biggest research areas from your perspective that people should start exploring to put people first in the Metaverse?

Camela Logan:
I think for me, two big research areas that come to mind are topics of resource allocation and identity. I find the Metaverse a really interesting space and also a really unique space given that technically speaking, users can create whichever world it is that they would like to in this space. So distinct from the offline world that we live in where we have hard limitations to the amount of resources that are at hand. So for example, the amount of physical land that exists or the amount of precious metal that we can have access to, the Metaverse is a space where people will be able to create as they find fit.

And this is a really exciting thing to think about that we haven't necessarily had the opportunity to think about when we are working within the confines of these offline spaces where the resources are limited. It presents some really unique opportunities for redistribution of resources to communities that typically don't get much access or any access to those resources or they're getting access to those resources but much later on where it might not necessarily have as much value. And so that I think is really exciting. And a second topic that I think is also really important and interesting is the topic of identity. So what will be the impact of people being able to take on any visual representation of themselves in the Metaverse? How do we enable creative expression that increases our user's sense of belonging while also ensuring that there are proper guardrails in place to ensure privacy, authenticity, safety, and inclusion in that space as well from day one.

Stacey Houston:
I love that. I love that. And I think you kind of stole one of my responses, but I want to double-click or maybe expand and we can chat a little bit about it. I think identity is a huge area. So as I start thinking about identity in some of my prior research in academic spaces, I think one of the sort of viewpoints that some scholars held was that the Metaverse would be a space where identities don't matter as much or take on an entirely different shape. And I think some of that may be true and there may be some opportunities to rethink the way we think about identity in these new virtual environments, but we'll ultimately need to figure out the actuality of how sort of physical identity and virtual identities map together in ways that create and recreate experiences for people both in offline spaces and online digital spaces.

So identity to me is one of the big, big areas that we should all spend some time thinking about as we think about the future of how we use identity as a core dimension to where there are patterns in people's experiences and interactions on the platform. So I think with that creativity comes some new and interesting challenges for all of us as designers to think about how we really get our hands around understanding how these new identities take shape.

Cool. I want to move us on to another question. If we step back from thinking about how people experience the Metaverse today. So for example, through avatar interactions or engaging with content in immersive ways, maybe even via digital workrooms, what about research in the Metaverse? How would a researcher need to think about adapting their research practice to fit this new technology? Camela, could we start with you?

Camela Logan:
Sure. I'm happy to take a stab here. I think one way that I see researchers really needing to think about how that they can adapt to their research practice is to adopt research strategies that are more immersive in nature and closer to what user's experiences are going to be like in the Metaverse. So we as researchers, we have our toolkits, we might be inclined to think of deploying different tools that we have within our toolkit that are well-equipped for understanding certain types of experiences and interactions in digital spaces that are already more formally formulated like in social media. But once we add in that immersive element of the Metaverse that is so essential to the Metaverse, the way that people are going to be interacting with each other is going to change substantially. So take for example, how users might be engaging with some type of informational unit that is being presented by them by a platform.

On a social media platform they might be engaging with that informational unit as block text, but if they're engaging with some type of information that is being shared in a space like the Metaverse, it's going to be a lot more immersive and might not necessarily just be a giant block of text that is presented in front of them. So I don't know, with thinking of these nuances that we're going to be encountering with just how people's experiences are going to be like in Metaverse in this immersive space, I think researchers are really going to need to explore how it is that they can iterate on existing research methods to also make them more inclusive as well.

So for example, taking things like participatory design, how can we get research participants to feel like they are engaging in immersive experience when we might be in a non-immersive setting. And so when conducting research on the Metaverse or in the Metaverse, I think it's going to be really critical to think about how to not unintentionally take research participants out of that immersive experience by relying on some of our existing toolkits that might not necessarily account for this critical element of the Metaverse.

Stacey Houston:
Yeah, in many ways we got to keep up is kind of what I'm hearing you say and get in front of the technology that we're starting to ask people about in order to fully capture their experiences. Yao, what about you? How do we need to think about adapting our research practices to fit the technological future?

Yao Ding:
Yeah, well, thinking about adapting research practices, most of my research requires adapting our study design to accommodate participants with various accessibility needs. One example is when recently I have a VR researcher to design her usability testing in the Metaverse with deaf participants who use sign language, who need sign language interpretation. And we had to think outside the box, did we need to either casting the video of the interpreter to VR or measuring a screen or a window to VR where we could type in instructions and questions in text format. It's a way to make sure that our study design is inclusive and accessible. And now I think it's really exciting to see that improved hand tracking can help expand use cases for different assistive communities and also assistive accessibility users in user studies in the future.

Stacey Houston:
Yeah, I love that. I love the direct tie to the space you're actually researching. I think for me, I want to come back to again that first part that you mentioned, Yao, which I think is a theme around making sure that we're baking in diversity, equity, and inclusion ideas from the very, very beginning and using the foundational stages that we're in and building this new technology to our advantage, if that makes sense. And so for me, as I think about adapting, to many folks this may not be new, especially those who work in spaces where they're always thinking about emerging technology or new technology or forward-looking technology, if you will. But I think it's really important to those of us who spend time working on products where we're ultimately looking to fix things that are problems because if certain groups were left out or because we didn't realize that these problems existed at the time that we built them.

And so we've got to make sure that we're engaging with a variety of different populations and perspectives as we're thinking about the future in these new technologies. So in our case, ranging from avid Metaverse enthusiasts to those who have never donned a headset and everyone in between. And I think part of the way I reorient my thinking for the future is to start making sure that we're meeting people where they are in terms of their knowledge of these new technologies, their hesitance to engage with these new technologies and really understanding those early stages even when people maybe have never not interacted with the technology or the version of the future that we're imagining yet. I think sometimes it could be the case that a researcher may over pivot on doing research with the population who isn't engaged with the technology, not realizing that there's a whole host of people who have been left out of that conversation.

And we start to draw conclusions about what the opportunities and the problems are based on who's actually using it. And then we sort of leave out or recreate some potential disparities with people who may not have had access or an opportunity to engage with that technology yet. So again, this is maybe common practice for folks who are already working at the intersection of new technology and human-centered design, but I think for those of us who are used to working in spaces where the technology already exists and we're working backwards, this could be a new way of thinking. Awesome. I want to push us along just a little bit further here. Tell me about what excites you about the possibilities for UX research in the Metaverse. And since I started with you, Yao and Camela before, I'll start with myself and give you all a little bit of time to think.

For me, I think the ability to transcend physical space is most exciting. So all of a sudden you can be in a world with someone who may be a thousand miles away and it builds the possibility for collaboration with researchers in the same way that it builds possibilities for us to be immersed in spaces with people from whom we might be trying to learn. And I think one step further from that, the ability to see and feel and embody space as someone talks about what they may be seeing or experiencing in the world becomes a little bit easier. So you can imagine just asking someone about their experience with X thing or what happens when you see or feel or have a certain experience and sometimes there's a number of degrees of separation with that experience. One, you're sort of asking about it at a particular time and in a particular setting, and you may be asking a participant to think back weeks, years in terms of time when they actually experience that thing.

And all of a sudden these new technologies sort of puts us in a space where we can co-experience those things together and use one another in that space and time to really dig into what that experience actually means for the researcher and a research participant. And there's likely some new and cool and interactive ways for users also, not just to take but interact with surveys. I'm a quantitative UX researcher by training, and so survey design and survey engagement is really something that interests me. And I think there's this new possibility for being fully immersed with not just concepts and experiences, but with the survey instrument that are, or even a qualitative research instrument as well that you can engage in with a participant that I think unlocks some new possibilities. Don't know what that fully looks like today, but that's really exciting about where we might be headed with our research practice. Camela, what about you? What excites you in terms of the possibilities for UX research in the Metaverse?

Camela Logan:
So one thing that really excites me about research in the Metaverse is the ability to expand on our understanding of our research participants experiences and needs through the study of the spaces that they're creating in the Metaverse themselves. So today, as researchers, we can deploy various research methods like contextual inquiry or different ethnographic methods to get some insight into the context or the spaces in which our research participants are living and experiencing our products. But in the Metaverse, people are going to be able to construct their own spaces and those spaces might look exactly like the spaces that they live in the offline world, but they might not look like it at all and it instead might reflect the spaces that they desire most and it might have all the things that they need in that space most too.

So I find this possibility of learning from the environments that participants are constructing in the Metaverse alongside of the interactions that they're having in the Metaverse just really exciting and seeing it as an opportunity of just elevating our ability to really stay true to our commitment as being the voice of the users and their needs.

Stacey Houston:
We talk a lot about making research participants comfortable when we do studies, when we do interviews or even surveys, and imagine that you as the researcher or a company are no longer making a participant feel comfortable, but they're welcoming you into a space that not just they live in in a physical world, but a space that they've created and what that does for the interaction of the interview. But again, as you point out what you can learn from those spaces as well is really, really exciting. I love that. Yao, any thoughts, follow-ups from you?

Yao Ding:
Yeah, not much to add, but I think it's amazing to hear what you said about doing research in more immersive forms. And I think what stood out to me is the ability to maybe mitigate some of the limitations in current research methods. So for example, we're doing more and more remote studies where people participate from places of their own choice. While it's convenient, it may add distractions or increased variance in the data we collect. And the Metaverse may be helpful in reducing distraction and reducing inconsistency. Everyone can be set in the same environment. And researching the Metaverse also brings about the feeling of presence, which is a big plus of in-person research. And what's more interesting is we're not limited to a single UX lab design as you and Camela just talk about, which are often designed to have a cozy living room atmosphere. And in the Metaverse it can be any place, any theme, any mood that the space is designed to set or simply a space the participant desire or need as you just mentioned. So there's a lot of possibilities in the research design and research environment we can create.

Stacey Houston:
Yeah, I love that. And I think this will segue nicely into the next question. So there are companies that help us do research and help us with our ability to scale and just provide us resources to make our research that much more both respectful of the research participant in their time and what they're sharing with us, but then also help us land more impact in our various companies, or with respect to the specific questions that we're asking. So what can those companies do, those companies that are partners or collaborators in research, if you will, do and maybe dscout is one of these partners, what can they do in terms of adapting their platforms to fit research in the Metaverse? Yao, any ideas or thoughts on that?

Yao Ding:
Yeah, I think to get started, it would be amazing to see dscout to make research tools accessible and inclusive to people with varying backgrounds and users of various accessibility needs, people who use various assistive technologies, which is a kind of important way for UX researchers to recruit more inclusively. Also, it would be nice for research partners like dscout to have inclusive research panels that represent intersectionality, which means overlapping identities and experiences like race, age, economic status, accessibility in use. And again, this will be immensely helpful for us researchers to recruit inclusively and build inclusion in the Metaverse.

Stacey Houston:
I love that. And I think we're starting to repeat some of the themes here and I'm going to repeat another one, which is that we should be thinking about how we can bring these technologies and our ability to scale and how we can use the future of technology to our advantage in that case. So this is more of a how might we, if you will, and not so much a strong suggestion, but how might we bring diary study platforms into the Metaverse so that people can provide their thoughts and ideas while they're immersed as opposed to having to switch back and forth between something that they might be experiencing say on a social media platform and then to this other platform to share their ideas and experiences and thoughts and have that be more sort of a realtime engagement and realtime feedback that may be a little bit closer to what they're ultimately looking for.

Sorry if you could hear the background noise. My daughter is coming in from school. But yes, I think ultimately we should just start to think how we can use the technology to our advantage. I'm also noticing Camela and Yao that our timer has stopped a little bit, so we've probably got about 10 more minutes and two more questions just to give us a little bit of a time check here. I wanted to move into some of the exciting pieces or we covered some of the exciting pieces or things we're looking forward to with respect to the future of research in the Metaverse, but I'd also imagine there are some things we should be aware of as well. So what might be some of the challenges with or unintended consequences of conducting research in these more immersive environments or as we think to use technology to our advantage?

And I'll start with this one and Camela and Yao, feel free to jump in. I know this is a sticky one so I'll take a stab, but I think privacy and immersion are real key things that we need to hold top of mind as we think about the future of human-centered design and research. So as researchers and designers, we're critical of what we're asking our participants to do by way of sharing their time and experiences with us. And I think this is so much more necessary when you're fully or even partially immersed. So as we talked about before, no longer is a survey popping up on your phone or in an email where there's some degree of separation with your actual experience and what you might be doing on a day-to-day, but now the survey is in this space with you, it's in your face.

And so as we think about the kinds of questions that we're asking that may be particularly confidential or emotionally triggering depending on the space that you're in, wanting to think carefully about things, how long the surveys are and what kinds of questions we'll ask, and how response bias and response rates may be affected as a result of this new way of engaging people with technology and research practice. And so I think that privacy and immersion takes on a new understanding and I think these are really, really core questions that we all need to be thinking about as we push forward with adapting the way we do research. Camela and Yao, anything you'd add to that or have I pretty much covered it with those big topics?

Camela Logan:
I feel like you covered the main ones that are coming to mind for me. The only thing that I would add is just the impact of not accounting for privacy and immersion on a user's level of trust also. So seeing the impact that can have, particularly when we're thinking about ensuring that we're creating an inclusive space for communities that might typically not be included, the oversight of accounting for privacy and also the unique experiences that might have in an immersive experience, those unintended consequences having a lot of impact on their levels of trust and potential ability or decision to revisit these spaces.

Stacey Houston:
I love that. I love that. Yao, any additional thoughts from you?

Yao Ding:
I'll probably add one quick thought, probably building on your points about privacy and building data security. And also on top of that we may need to think harder about inclusion and some population cohorts are left behind, if we don't make the research tools inclusive and in that way we may not be able to hear their voices and their insights may not be obtained and incorporated into the product design and the gap will be exacerbated if we don't include them.

Stacey Houston:
That is a great thought. As we get excited about these new and immersive technologies, I think back to the same point we thought about earlier, that there's a version where we start talking to people who are engaging with these technologies and there's some bias in who's able to access. If we try to use the technology to actually answer questions, we may be leaving some people behind who may not be able to engage with us in the form or using the technology that we're trying to. So plus 1,000 to that one. And I think that that again is a great segue into our final question in our topic. Let's talk explicitly about DEI as it pertains to research in the Metaverse. So what is approaching research, a key to me, the most foundational part of the product development process through an equitable and inclusive lens actually look like in the Metaverse and in the future? Yao, could we start with you?

Yao Ding:
Yeah, I guess as a UX researcher, it's our kind of superpower to give users a voice who use different assisted technologies, who have various accessibility needs in our product development. And if we look at the history, for too long and too often designs are made without direct input from the disability communities. And it has to change and it has to change now. It can start from US UX researchers being more inclusive, more accommodating in our participant recruitment, in our study designs, in our choice of research tools. We try to include people with various backgrounds, various needs in our studies and be intentional with inclusivity, diversity, equity. Yeah, that's the kind of starting point that we need to act upon right now.

Stacey Houston:
I love that. What about you Camela? How can we start approaching or what do we need to do to approach research through a DEI lens in the Metaverse?

Camela Logan:
For me it means conducting research with topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as related topics like access and safety top of mind in informing every single step of your research process. So at each phase of your work, from when you are designing your study to when you are recruiting or fielding, conducting your analysis, even reporting out your findings, taking the time to think critically about who might be missing there, whether due to historical or cultural legacies or oppressive systems or the particular research approach that you're taking or how it is that you might be framing your study. And then I think the next step, which in my perspective is the most critical, is taking that time to identify specific tactics that you can take to bring those people in who you identified as missing from each of those phases.

But to a point that Stacey was saying earlier, not just ensuring that they are there, making sure that they also feel included and they feel like they actually have the space to fully participate. And so yeah, in my perspective, it's really trying to say how it is that we can remain as true as possible to our commitment as researchers of being the voice of all of our users by taking that time when we are scoping out our projects to ensure that there is space for all of those users voices to actually be heard and seen and presented at each step of the way.

Stacey Houston:
I love that. And you two have covered it for me, I don't have a time to add. I think just to put a little bit of some icing on top, if you will, is to think about these from the perspective of co-design, which I think is exactly what both of you are saying, that we need to be doing these things with the community, not just for or on the community, if you will.

And I think there's no better time than now looking forward to start bringing people in to every aspect of our design process. And so as much as we, again, sometimes don't know the best questions to ask or are worried that people may be left behind in terms of how we may be conducting our research or their prior experience with different technologies that we may want to ask about, I think if we stick to designing research studies and designing our questions and even figuring out what the right questions to ask are with the community and not just doing that in isolation within our companies or within our various independent teams, we'll just be better prepared for success and be better answering the questions of the future if we do that with people today.

So yeah, just to sort of double-click on all of that, doing all of exactly what we've all said today with participants, with folks in the community, I think is the best way to ensure that DEI is actually included, our key focal point. Any wrap up thoughts from you all in the last minute or so with respect to the future of researching human-centered design in the Metaverse and beyond?

Yao Ding:
No, I just wanted to thank you for moderating Stacey, and it's a pleasure speaking with you.

Stacey Houston:
Awesome.

Camela Logan:
Thank you so much for having us.

Stacey Houston:
Cool. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the conference. Thank you all for spending time with us today and yeah, hope it was useful. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn and continue the conversations. I think we have plenty to do and we'll sort of all do it together in terms of building the future, building the Metaverse, and making sure that human-centered design stays a focal point. Thanks, everyone.