Social acceptability of virtual reality in public spaces

Reality Anchors: Bringing Cues from Reality to Increase Acceptance of Immersive Technologies in Transit

“…The investigation of the social acceptability of immersive technologies in public spaces is a relatively new topic but there are some initial insights. The current body of work can be divided into research that had a broad look at the social acceptability of new wearable technologies [27,28], or the use of headsets in public [11,22,30,46,72], including more focused work on gaze [3] and gestures [26,32], or discussion of the user and observer roles [4,69,72]. Some authors specifically looked at travelling contexts [5,11,15,65,74,75], but focused on limited application areas, such as entertainment [74], or had a more theoretical approach to the work, lacking in situ studies [15,65] and showed a need for further research in real-world environments [75].…”

“…The current body of work can be divided into research that had a broad look at the social acceptability of new wearable technologies [27,28], or the use of headsets in public [11,22,30,46,72], including more focused work on gaze [3] and gestures [26,32], or discussion of the user and observer roles [4,69,72]. Some authors specifically looked at travelling contexts [5,11,15,65,74,75], but focused on limited application areas, such as entertainment [74], or had a more theoretical approach to the work, lacking in situ studies [15,65] and showed a need for further research in real-world environments [75]. Finally, the researchers that deployed their experiments in situ [11] were limited to public spaces, such as a university café, which are not representative of passenger experiences whilst travelling.…”

“…Some authors specifically looked at travelling contexts [5,11,15,65,74,75], but focused on limited application areas, such as entertainment [74], or had a more theoretical approach to the work, lacking in situ studies [15,65] and showed a need for further research in real-world environments [75]. Finally, the researchers that deployed their experiments in situ [11] were limited to public spaces, such as a university café, which are not representative of passenger experiences whilst travelling. This collection of research revealed that it is important that the action of using the headset is seen as appropriate by the passengers themselves and observers, preventing concerns for privacy [15] or feeling like you look "stupid" [75], affecting the image of the headset wearer [5], but needs to be further explored in travelling contexts.…”

“…Immersive technologies have advantages over traditional mobile devices because they can simulate unlimited screen sizes and render virtual content anywhere around the user. While immersive technology could enable us to reclaim our time while travelling, occluding personal belongings and other passengers brings physical safety [5,37], comfort [63] and social acceptability [11,59,75] concerns. These are potentially serious obstacles to the acceptance of immersive technology use in transit.…”

Staging Location-Based Virtual Reality to Improve Immersive Experiences

“…As pointed out by Eghbali et al [4] "the isolation of the user from the others can create a form of social gap that may affect the social acceptability in public context." We identified three social gaps 8 due to the use of HMDs:…”