Towards Spatial Introspection and Experiential Prospection: A Speculative Design Inquiry in Extended Reality

2025, at Reality Design Lab

Author / Yilan Tao, Botao Amber Hu, Echo Zhou and Esther Zhou

Keywords / Mixed Reality, Speculative Design, XR Memory

Contribution / Concept design, academic writing, illustration

Overview

Major technology companies envision a future in which Extended Reality (XR) smartglasses become as ubiquitous as smartphones, serving as external memory recorders worn throughout the day to capture everything users see and hear. Although this persistent recording raises pressing privacy concerns, it also promises transformative opportunities for personal growth. This speculative design inquiry introduces “Memory Engineering Inc.,” a fictional enterprise offering six XR applications—ThirdEye, MindfulTag, AlterPast, DejaVision, Dance With Self, and TwoChairs—that leverage spatial memory for introspection and prospection. Through these scenarios, we uncover new dimensions of self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-envisioning in XR with AI technologies. In doing so, we highlight the ethical, social, and psychological implications of harvesting personal spatial memory data, urging deeper discourse on how XR-based introspection and prospection might be responsibly envisioned, critiqued, and implemented.

Introduction

Major technology companies such as Apple, Google, and Meta are pushing the boundaries of Extended Reality (XR), envisioning a future in which XR smart glasses become as commonplace as smartphones are today . This marks a profound shift in the near future: XR smart glasses will be worn throughout the day, capturing everything users see and hear, and continuously functioning as external recorders and manipulators of “spatial memory.”

We refer to this captured data as spatial memory—a first-person viewpoint aligned with the user’s line of sight. In addition to RGB video, these devices can capture spatial depth information through technologies like LiDAR. Theoretically, it would be possible to reconstruct a user’s entire life in 3D along a timeline. Storing such an extensive amount of data—comparable to an 80-year span of 4K video—becomes increasingly feasible due to the exponential decline in storage costs.

Certainly, collecting such comprehensive spatial memory data raises pressing privacy concerns and will undoubtedly hold significant value for corporations seeking business intelligence for advertising and recommendation systems. Yet, these data also hold remarkable potential for personal growth and well-being. As AI technology and XR media continue to evolve rapidly, we ask ourselves: How might we harness personal spatial memory data to foster personal flourishing and life growth?

One domain of personal growth that could benefit immensely from access to spatial memory is introspection [5]. Introspection entails examining one’s own thoughts, memories, feelings, and mental processes to cultivate deeper self-awareness.

This reflective process is critical for learning, personal development, goal setting, relationship building, and emotional processing. However, human memory is inherently limited: it can fail us when we forget (inability to recall information), distort (alter the original perception), or persist (inability to let go of unwanted memories). How might spatial memory recorded by XR devices enrich and extend these reflective practices?

Because introspection ultimately aims to improve our future selves, it naturally leads to prospection—the practice of envisioning future scenarios for planning, decision-making, and motivation. While prospection is vital for goal-setting and crisis prevention, our attempts at “futuring” often remain abstract and lack immersive detail. How might we create a “memory” of the future for users to experience in more embodied way through XR? And how can AI-driven XR technology serve as a powerful tool for immersively envisioning one’s future?

In this speculative design inquiry, we explore how Extended Reality—combined with Artificial Intelligence and personal spatial memory gathered from XR glasses—can become a potent resource for both introspection and prospection. We introduce a fictional enterprise, “Memory Engineering Inc.”, whose core business revolves around designing XR smartglasses applications that “engineer” both past and future memories. We speculate on six XR applications released by this company—ThirdEye, MindfulTag, AlterPast, DejaVision, Dance With Self, and TwoChairs—each leveraging spatial memory to enhance introspection and prospection.

Through these speculative scenarios, we reveal new dimensions of self-reflection, self-awareness, and future envisioning in XR and AI contexts. Simultaneously, we address the ethical, social, and psychological implications of harvesting personal spatial memory data, urging critical dialogue on how XR-based introspection and prospection might be responsibly designed, critiqued, and implemented.

Our contributions are threefold:

Introducing “Lifespan as Design Space.” Because spatial memory can be captured and manipulated, an individual’s life memory can be treated as a design material—enabling the creation, editing, and reimagining of past and future memories for personal growth.

Defining “spatial introspection” and “experiential prospection.” These concepts transform traditionally abstract cognitive processes into embodied, phenomenological experiences. We examine how XR can offer fresh perspectives on lived memories while also illuminating the paradoxes and challenges inherent in self-examination and future-oriented reflection.

Presenting six speculative XR prototypes. We propose the apps ThirdEye, MindfulTag, AlterPast, DejaVision, Dance With Self, and TwoChairs to inspire future XR memory designers. We then discuss the broader implications of our work, emphasizing potential ethical considerations and identifying promising directions for research and practice in designing introspective and prospective XR experiences.

Mindful Tag

Mental Health Benefits: Reduces anxiety by creating distance from thoughts. Strengthens metacognition. With its unique ability to understand and analyze your past memories, the system can use AI to identify the most significant ones and present them to you in a flash. The spatial organization within the memory palace is designed to instill a sense of order and tranquility, helping you feel calm and collected.

You can tag it by saying “thinking,” “feeling,” “other people’s thought,” “not my thought,” “it’s just an idea,” it’s a fact,” “it’s a decision,” “it’s not my decision” …, it will visually packing the memory into a virtual box, laying over the memory palace. This process helps you to keep your memory clear and let go of unlabelled and chaotic thoughts in your brain.

ThirdEyes

This unique app utilizes your spatial memory data and the latest volumetric reconstruction technologies, offering a novel way to engage with your memories, to provide a free third-person perspective of your lived experiences. This unique approach allows you to see your body in the actual scenes, providing a new angle to observe yourself as a bystander. Because our memory is first person, and when we have experienced life, we may not recall all the details and cognitively ignore some regular habits.

Two Chairs

This app serves as a tool for self-reflection, helping you remember your past mental states and track your personal growth. It also encourages you to think about your current situation and how it relates to your past decisions, influencing your future for better self-growth. Both spatial introspection and prospective.

It will mimic your mental behavior and your own appearance. Because the AI system knows all your memory history. It can simulate any self-continuity from your past memory. Not only can this AI system simulate your past self, but it can also project your future self. This means you can have conversations with any version of yourself, past or future.

AlterPast

This unique feature is made possible because your glasses record all spatial video information of the scenes, allowing for volumetric reconstruction. The app's multi-agent AI system learns people's behaviors in their memories, dynamically generating intelligent virtual avatars that simulate realistic behaviors and responses based on past interactions. You can even step into other people's shoes in your memories, making for a truly immersive experience.

Discussion

Spatial Memory as a Key Resource for Personal Growth

Despite the human brain’s remarkable capabilities, it remains vulnerable to what Schacter calls the “seven sins of memory,” grouped into three categories: forgetting (e.g., absent-mindedness), distortion (e.g., misattribution), and persistence (e.g., intrusive memories). These limitations highlight the potential value of a robust external memory system—one that continuously captures and archives our lived experiences.

XR smartglasses, worn throughout the day, can record high-fidelity RGB video, audio, and depth data from the wearer’s perspective. This external, persistent collection of “spatial memory” has never been more feasible, thanks to declining storage costs. Indeed, smartglasses represent a paradigm shift: they do not merely “augment” reality; they record it, forming a rich repository of personal data. This repository can serve as a powerful resource for self-reflection, learning, and broader personal development. Through XR and AI, individuals might revisit meaningful life episodes, gain greater awareness of their present habits, and even explore plausible futures—thus bridging limitations in human recall and reshaping how people engage in introspection and prospective.

Speculative Design for Life

The notion that one’s life can be intentionally shaped and redesigned resonates with speculative design approaches, which invite us to project and critically examine potential futures. Speculative design does more than entertain “what if” scenarios—it can serve as an intervention that reduces entropy (uncertainty) in our life trajectories by proactively exploring possible consequences and preemptive actions. In this context, preemption is the deliberate move to secure more desirable futures or avert undesirable outcomes. When applied to personal growth, speculative design can help individuals clarify their goals, values, and aspirations by envisioning how different life paths might unfold. This aligns with the “Designing Your Life” methodology from Stanford, which encourages iterative prototyping of life choices.

Expanding the Design Space of Introspection

Introspection has traditionally focused on conscious, subjective reflections—through journaling, meditation, cognitive-behavioral techniques, and other psychological practices. Most of these methods rely heavily on memory recall, whether from immediate experiences or from deeper autobiographical narratives. As HCI research has increasingly recognized the importance of reflection for personal well-being, spatial memory adds a transformative layer.

“Spatial introspection” can be defined as a reflective process that uses immersive, first-person data—captured via XR devices—to revisit, relive, and even reconfigure personal past experiences. Instead of merely recounting events abstractly, spatial introspection allows users to embody their recollections. Users can step into a near-perfect recreation of a moment in time, offering fresh perspectives on overlooked details. Meanwhile, MindfulTag enables users to label and annotate recorded experiences, clustering them to identify recurring themes or gain new interpretations of their lives. AlterPast takes things further by introducing AI-driven agents that replay past interpersonal dynamics—letting users ask, “What if I had acted differently?” or “How might I handle this better next time?” In all these examples, spatial memory becomes the catalyst that elevates introspection from a purely cognitive exercise to a lived, embodied experience.

Expanding the Design Space of Prospection

Prospection involves envisioning and evaluating potential futures to inform current decisions, set goals, and foster motivation. In XR and design research, “experiential futures” use immersive technologies to make hypothetical scenarios more palpable and actionable. While prospection is inherently imaginative, XR can make it vividly concrete by leveraging personal data and AI-driven simulation.