Hi, I'm Shwetha!

As we approach the everyday usage of AR, novel privacy concerns arise (e.g., environmental sensing techniques capturing sensitive physical areas or bystanders without their consent). To mitigate privacy risks across the AR development and usage lifecycle, my PhD research develops tools and frameworks that equip AR designers, developers, and end-users with a privacy mindset.

Exploring the Design Space of Privacy-Driven Adaptation Techniques for Future Augmented Reality Interfaces

CHI 2025, Honorable Mention

Shwetha Rajaram, Macarena Peralta, Janet G. Johnson, Michael Nebeling

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

Reframe: An Augmented Reality Storyboarding Tool for Character-Driven Analysis of Security & Privacy Concerns

UIST 2023

Shwetha Rajaram, Franziska Roesner, Michael Nebeling

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

Eliciting Security & Privacy-Informed Sharing Techniques for Multi-User Augmented Reality

CHI 2023

Shwetha Rajaram, Chen Chen, Franziska Roesner, Michael Nebeling

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Talk

End-users' goals and perceptions of risk when using emerging technologies can vary across public vs. private settings and personal vs. collaborative experiences. Through internships and other projects, I've explored customization techniques that allow users to tailor XR and GenAI-enabled interactions to their context-dependent needs, such as supporting distributed collaboration in video-conferencing or VR environments and facilitating socially-acceptable conversations with wearable voice interfaces.

Gesture and Audio-Haptic Guidance Techniques to Direct Conversations with Intelligent Voice Interfaces

CHI 2025

Shwetha Rajaram, Hemant Bhaskar Surale, Codie McConkey, Carine Rognon, Hrim Mehta, Michael Glueck, Christopher Collins

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video
• Talk

BlendScape: Enabling End-User Customization of Video-Conferencing Environments through Generative AI

UIST 2024, Honorable Mention

Shwetha Rajaram*, Nels Numan*, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Nicolai Marquardt, Andrew D. Wilson

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

SpaceBlender: Creating Context-Rich Collaborative Spaces Through Generative 3D Scene Blending

UIST 2024

Nels Numan*, Shwetha Rajaram*, Balasaravanan Thoravi Kumaravel, Nicolai Marquardt, Andrew D. Wilson

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

Paper Trail: An Immersive Authoring System for Augmented Reality Instructional Experiences

CHI 2022

Shwetha Rajaram, Michael Nebeling

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

XRStudio: A Virtual Production Technology Probe for Immersive Instructional Experiences

CHI 2021

Michael Nebeling, Shwetha Rajaram, Liwei Wu, Yi Fei Cheng, Jaylin Herskovitz

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

MRAT: The Mixed Reality Analytics Toolkit

CHI 2020, Best Paper

Michael Nebeling, Maximillian Speicher, Xizi Wang, Shwetha Rajaram, Brian Hall, Zijian Xie, Alexander Raistrick, Michelle Aebersold, Edward Happ, Jiayin Wang, Yanan Sun, Lotus Zhang, Leah Ramsier, Rhea Kulkarni

• ACM DL
• Paper
• Video

• shwethar [at] umich.edu
• Bluesky
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

• Google Scholar
• Curriculum Vitae

Summer 2025 • Looking forward to spending summer in Ann Arbor! I'll attend CHI and HCIC; otherwise, find me squirrel watching and working on dissertation research :)

March 2025 • Some new work to share!

How can we approach adapting AR interfaces from a privacy perspective? We worked with AR researchers to elicit a design space of techniques to accomplish core AR functionalities in more privacy-friendly ways.

During my internship at Meta Reality Labs, I explored how to reduce friction in interaction with wearable voice interfaces. We developed a suite of gesture and audio-haptic interaction techniques that enable users to flexibly navigate information and manage conversation timing.