“Nice to see you virtually”: Thoughtful design and evaluation of virtual avatar of the other user in AR and VR based telexistence systems

Pakanen, Minna; Alavesa, Paula; Berkel, Niels van; Koskela, Timo; Ojala, Timo

doi:10.1016/j.entcom.2021.100457

Cited by 42 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…There has been increased interest recently in the use of holograms and holographic representations in virtual environments (Casagrande, 2020;Verdict Media, 2022). However, the consensus seems to be that these systems will not replace the pervasive virtual avatars in the near future (Pakanen et al, 2022). Most experts agree that holographic virtual representations have advantages in specific application areas (such as healthcare), but expect avatars to remain as the ubiquitous form of virtual representation in most online virtual environments (O'Connor, 2021;Wolf et al, 2022).…”

Section: Avatarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the Effects of Being Einstein: An Experiment in Social Virtual Reality

Cummins¹,

Schofield²

2023

CIS

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Previous research has found that when using virtual reality, a person can have a sense of ownership over the body that is being substituted for their own in the virtual world, and that the body’s appearance may lead to different behavioral, attitudinal, and perceptual changes. As Virtual Reality (VR) becomes more widespread, it is increasingly important to understand the effects on its users. This study utilized a novel methodology to conduct remote testing in virtual reality, leveraging a popular social virtual reality platform to test whether participants using Einstein as their virtual body performed better at a cognitive task than participants using other virtual bodies, and did not find any effect or correlation of the virtual body with any of the factors measured. The results suggest that the effects of virtual embodiment on the user stemming from the virtual body's appearance is more complex than previously assumed, warranting further study.

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Section: Avatarsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying the Effects of Being Einstein: An Experiment in Social Virtual Reality

Cummins¹,

Schofield²

2023

CIS

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“…Their research provides off-the-shelf workflows and research methodologies for future psychological research on digital bodies and identity. Pakanen et al (2022) presented two studies on how users want to see other users in VR and AR multi-user systems, focusing on avatar visual designs. They created 36 comparable avatars with six styles ranging from Photorealistic, Hologram, Cartoon, Shadow, Robot, to Furry, and six body alterations from full body to only eye and mouth.…”

Section: Avatar-identity Related User Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is also worthwhile marking social VR citizens who have suspicious identities or activities. One the other hand, Pakanen et al (2022) suggests that visual designs of avatars will influence how other users perceive them and might have an impact on trust-building. It will be interesting to find out whether explicit information of authenticity (e.g., an identity status) or implicit indicators (e.g., the designs or rendering styles of the avatars) can effectively communicate the trustworthiness of social VR citizens and influence their trust among each other.…”

Section: Rq4: How To Indicate the Authenticity Of Social Vr Citizens'...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital body, identity and privacy in social virtual reality: A systematic review

Lin

Latoschik

2022

Front. Virtual Real.

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Social Virtual Reality (social VR or SVR) provides digital spaces for diverse human activities, social interactions, and embodied face-to-face encounters. While our digital bodies in SVR can in general be of almost any conceivable appearance, individualized or even personalized avatars bearing users’ likeness recently became an interesting research topic. Such digital bodies show a great potential to enhance the authenticity of social VR citizens and increase the trustworthiness of interpersonal interaction. However, using such digital bodies might expose users to privacy and identity issues such as identity theft: For instance, how do we know whether the avatars we encounter in the virtual world are who they claim to be? Safeguarding users’ identities and privacy, and preventing harm from identity infringement, are crucial to the future of social VR. This article provides a systematic review on the protection of users’ identity and privacy in social VR, with a specific focus on digital bodies. Based on 814 sources, we identified and analyzed 49 papers that either: 1) discuss or raise concerns about the addressed issues, 2) provide technologies and potential solutions for protecting digital bodies, or 3) examine the relationship between the digital bodies and users of social VR citizens. We notice a severe lack of research and attention on the addressed topic and identify several research gaps that need to be filled. While some legal and ethical concerns about the potential identity issues of the digital bodies have been raised, and despite some progress in specific areas such as user authentication has been made, little research has proposed practical solutions. Finally, we suggest potential future research directions for digital body protection and include relevant research that might provide insights. We hope this work could provide a good overview of the existing discussion, potential solutions, and future directions for researchers with similar concerns. We also wish to draw attention to identity and privacy issues in social VR and call for interdisciplinary collaboration.

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“…VR also provides more equal opportunities globally and facilitates viewpoints from globally scattered team members, benefiting both the multi-national company and its employees. Lifelike, realistic avatars would further improve the sense of togetherness and working as a team, as people would be easily recognized in VR [53].…”

Section: Benefits Of Vr To Collaboration and Inclusivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Benefits of Collaborative VR Review for Maintenance Documentation and Risk Assessment

Heinonen¹,

Burova

Siltanen³

et al. 2022

Applied Sciences

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Technical documentation creation is a collaborative process involving several departments in R&D. Even though virtual reality (VR) has been demonstrated to facilitate industrial collaboration and advance the product development lifecycle in earlier studies, it has not been utilized for technical documentation review and risk assessment processes in industrial companies. This article presents a case study where the benefits of VR to maintenance documentation reviews and risk assessments were studied. The virtual reality environment was tested by nine domain experts from an industrial company in a user study that replicated their actual real-life industrial collaboration tasks. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected during the study. Our findings show that collaborative VR has the potential to enhance the documentation review and risk assessment processes. Overall, the concept of using virtual reality for documentation review and risk assessment processes was rated positively by participants, and even though further development is needed for the review tools, VR was viewed as a concept that facilitates collaboration, enhances the current review practices, and increases spatial understanding. The benefits of VR are evident, especially for geographically scattered teams that rarely meet face-to-face or do not have access to the actual physical equipment. In cases where traditional means of communication are not enough, process improvements are needed for documentation review and risk assessment processes, and our proposed solution is VR.

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“Nice to see you virtually”: Thoughtful design and evaluation of virtual avatar of the other user in AR and VR based telexistence systems

Cited by 42 publications

References 30 publications

Studying the Effects of Being Einstein: An Experiment in Social Virtual Reality

Studying the Effects of Being Einstein: An Experiment in Social Virtual Reality

Digital body, identity and privacy in social virtual reality: A systematic review

Evaluating the Benefits of Collaborative VR Review for Maintenance Documentation and Risk Assessment

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