Avatars and Environments for Meetings in Social VR: What Styles and Choices Matter to People in Group Creativity Tasks?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Osborne, Anya, Fielder, Sabrina, Taber, Lee, Lamb, Tara, McVeigh-Schultz, Joshua, Isbister, Katherine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Osborne, Anya
Fielder, Sabrina
Taber, Lee
Lamb, Tara
McVeigh-Schultz, Joshua
Isbister, Katherine
author_facet Osborne, Anya
Fielder, Sabrina
Taber, Lee
Lamb, Tara
McVeigh-Schultz, Joshua
Isbister, Katherine
contents Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many professional entities shifted toward remote collaboration and video conferencing (VC) tools. Social virtual reality (VR) platforms present an alternative to VC for meetings and collaborative activities. Well-crafted social VR environments could enhance feelings of co-presence and togetherness at meetings, helping reduce the need for carbon-intensive travel to face-to-face meetings. This research contributes to creating meeting tools in VR by exploring the effects of avatar styles and virtual environments on groups creative performance using the Mozilla Hubs platform. We present the results of two sequential studies. Study One surveys avatar and environment preferences in various VR meeting contexts (N=87). Study Two applies these findings to the design of a between-subjects and within-subjects research where participants (N=40) perform creativity tasks in pairs as embodied avatars in different virtual settings using VR headsets. We discuss the design implications of avatar appearances and meeting settings on teamwork.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21780
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Avatars and Environments for Meetings in Social VR: What Styles and Choices Matter to People in Group Creativity Tasks?
Osborne, Anya
Fielder, Sabrina
Taber, Lee
Lamb, Tara
McVeigh-Schultz, Joshua
Isbister, Katherine
Human-Computer Interaction
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many professional entities shifted toward remote collaboration and video conferencing (VC) tools. Social virtual reality (VR) platforms present an alternative to VC for meetings and collaborative activities. Well-crafted social VR environments could enhance feelings of co-presence and togetherness at meetings, helping reduce the need for carbon-intensive travel to face-to-face meetings. This research contributes to creating meeting tools in VR by exploring the effects of avatar styles and virtual environments on groups creative performance using the Mozilla Hubs platform. We present the results of two sequential studies. Study One surveys avatar and environment preferences in various VR meeting contexts (N=87). Study Two applies these findings to the design of a between-subjects and within-subjects research where participants (N=40) perform creativity tasks in pairs as embodied avatars in different virtual settings using VR headsets. We discuss the design implications of avatar appearances and meeting settings on teamwork.
title Avatars and Environments for Meetings in Social VR: What Styles and Choices Matter to People in Group Creativity Tasks?
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21780