Working Together on Diverse Tasks: A Longitudinal Study on Individual Workload, Presence and Emotional Recognition in Collaborative Virtual Environments

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown the potential benefits of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) for distributed teams. However, there are few longitudinal studies on collaboration in immersive virtual environments, and existing studies mostly examine how pairs or groups adapt over time. In a longitudinal study, we examined what does and does not change over time as individual users adapt to collaboration in virtual environments. In our mixed-methods, exploratory study, we matched 20 participants in random pairs over five sessions. We assigned each participant to complete a different collaborative task, with a different partner, in each session. Our quantitative data analysis and qualitative interview data show that adaptation to VR increased significantly over time. Presence ratings did not show change over time, but participants reported developing new ways to communicate in VR. We also identified patterns indicating a relationship between a person’s emotional state and their partner’s ability to recognize their emotion. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and provide design implications and future directions for designers and researchers in the field.

Realistic Motion Avatars are the Future for Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

“…The sample in the present study was predominately 30-year-old socially active females with limited experience with virtual reality. Research suggests that repeated exposure to computer mediated communication can act to enhance the perception of richness of that mode (Fernandez et al, 2013;Khojasteh & Won, 2021). Furthermore, we expect that other types of participants might be more open-minded about the technology.…”

Multiparty Holomeetings: Toward a New Era of Low-Cost Volumetric Holographic Meetings in Virtual Reality

“…Compared to shared experiences through 2D screens when using traditional video conferencing tools, social VR aims to deliver experiences that are closer to physical meetings by maximizing the feeling of plausibility, presence, copresence, as well as the interaction quality (e.g., [5], [8], [9], [19]). Many works have evaluated how the interactions and QoE in social VR are impacted by system design features like avatar formats and realism.…”

“…Many works have evaluated how the interactions and QoE in social VR are impacted by system design features like avatar formats and realism. The work in [8] suggests that even though social VR systems reduce usability (i.e., they are less easy to use, probably due to lack of familiarity), they increase presence when compared to traditional conferencing systems (even when using 2D screens and avatar-based representations), concluding that both types of tools seem to be effective for conducting online lessons. The work in [20] highlights the potential of VR technologies in effectively supporting interactive conversations and collaborations between remote users, although it reflects on the need for a collaborative design framework addressing key factors and aspects, such as: (i) variability in social immersion; (ii) user and conversational roles; and (iii) effective shared (and spatial) references.…”

“…The work in [20] highlights the potential of VR technologies in effectively supporting interactive conversations and collaborations between remote users, although it reflects on the need for a collaborative design framework addressing key factors and aspects, such as: (i) variability in social immersion; (ii) user and conversational roles; and (iii) effective shared (and spatial) references. The work in [8] reports a longitudinal and exploratory study on individual workload, presence, and emotional recognition in collaborative multi-party virtual environments. The obtained results show that although the reported levels of presence and workload did not vary over time, the adaptation to VR (in terms of interaction with partners and execution of tasks) significantly increased over time, and the reported levels of co-presence were influenced by the task at hand.…”

“…Thus, their contributions were mostly focused on the shared VR scenario and content being consumed, although to a lesser extent on the quality of user representations and of user communication when this is the focus, such as in pure multi-user communications like video 1 Sceenic, https://www.sceenic.com/ Last accessed in June 2022 2 Mozilla Hubs, https://hubs.mozilla.com/ Last accessed in June 2022 3 Facebook Horizon, https://www.oculus.com/facebook-horizon/ Last accessed in June 2022 4 AltSpaceVR, https://altvr.com/ Last accessed in June 2022 conferences. A few other studies have focused on analyzing the effectiveness of interaction and collaboration in multiuser social VR scenarios (e.g., [8]), and some even consider aspects of content comprehension in comparison to traditional conferencing solutions (e.g., [9]). However, these later works are restricted to the use of avatar-based social VR solutions.…”