  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.
