The Attention-Aware Pipeline: Design Tensions from Making Attention Visible in XR

2026-06-02

AI Summary

In collaborative extended reality (XR) environments, the coordination cues embedded in users’ gaze behavior are often invisible, leading to attentional tunneling and breakdowns in collaboration. This work proposes an “attention-aware pipeline” (Capture, Record, Revisualize) that establishes a feedback loop through real-time gaze visualization, and designs three prototypes that render attention as mirror, medium, and mediator, respectively. The study systematically uncovers the design tensions introduced by this feedback mechanism and advances a novel subtractive intervention strategy to mitigate attentional tunneling. Integrating XR eye tracking, real-time visualization, and subtractive reality techniques, an exploratory experiment with four musicians confirms the existence of the problem and provides empirical grounding for future interventions in solo sight-reading scenarios.

Abstract

Where people look during shared activity carries coordination cues that speech and gesture cannot replace, but these patterns remain invisible to participants. XR headsets make gaze available as real-time input, yet few systems feed it back visually. We frame our work using the Attention-Aware Pipeline (Capture, Record, Revisualize), whose feedback loop means the systems visual response alters what users attend to next, triggering further responses. This generates design tensions whose form depends on each stages configuration. We trace the pipeline through three systems casting attention as a mirror (reflecting gaze history), a medium (sharing it across collaborators), and a mediator (intervening through diminished reality). Each encountered a tension the loop predicted, motivating the next. A formative eye-tracking study of four musicians surfaced attentional tunneling and near-total disconnection, confirming the need for intervention. We present these tensions and a next step: testing whether subtractive intervention reduces tunneling for a single sight-reader.

Problem

• attention awareness
• gaze visualization
• XR collaboration
• attentional tunneling
• design tensions

Innovation

• Attention-Aware Pipeline
• gaze visualization
• design tensions
• extended reality (XR)
• subtractive intervention