The metaverse refers to the merger of technologies for providing a digital twin of the real world and the underlying connectivity and interactions for the many kinds of agents within. As this set of technology paradigms - involving artificial intelligence, mixed reality, the internet-of-things and others - gains in scale, maturity, and utility there are rapidly emerging design challenges and new research opportunities. In particular is the metaverse disconnect problem, the gap in task switching that inevitably occurs when a user engages with multiple virtual and physical environments simultaneously. Addressing this gap remains an open issue that affects the user experience and must be overcome to increase overall utility of the metaverse. This article presents design frameworks that consider how to address the metaverse as a hyper-connected meta-environment that connects and expands multiple user environments, modalities, contexts, and the many objects and relationships within them. This article contributes to i) a framing of the metaverse as a social XR-IoT (XRI) concept, ii) design Considerations for XRI metaverse experiences, iii) a design architecture for social multi-user XRI metaverse environments, and iv) descriptive exploration of social interaction scenarios within XRI multi-user metaverses. These contribute a new design framework for metaverse researchers and creators to consider the coming wave of interconnected and immersive smart environments.

翻译：元宇宙是指融合多项技术以提供真实世界的数字孪生体，以及其中多种智能体间的基础连接与交互。随着这一技术范式集合——涵盖人工智能、混合现实、物联网等领域——在规模、成熟度和实用性上持续提升，迅速涌现出新的设计挑战与研究机遇。其中尤为突出的是元宇宙断连问题，即当用户同时参与多个虚拟与物理环境时，不可避免地出现的任务切换缺口。解决这一问题仍是关乎用户体验的开放性议题，必须加以克服以提升元宇宙的整体实用性。本文提出设计框架，探讨如何将元宇宙视为一个超连接元环境，该环境连接并扩展了多个用户环境、模态、语境及其中的众多对象与关系。本文的贡献包括：i) 将元宇宙框架化为社会XR-IoT（XRI）概念，ii) XRI元宇宙体验的设计考量，iii) 社会多用户XRI元宇宙环境的设计架构，以及iv) 对XRI多用户元宇宙中社会交互场景的描述性探索。这些成果为元宇宙研究人员与创作者提供了新的设计框架，以应对即将到来的互联与沉浸式智能环境浪潮。