UC Santa Cruz

Remote collaboration has become increasingly necessary in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many coworkers and collaborators have moved in-person meetings to video conferencing (VC) interfaces such as Zoom. While not yet as common as video conferencing platforms, social virtual reality (VR) tools are becoming an increasingly viable option for how we choose to work remotely. Unlike other remote collaboration interfaces, VR affords near-complete immersion in a virtual environment while allowing users to construct virtual representations of themselves in the form of avatars. Remote teams may choose to use VR applications over traditional VC interfaces to feel more connected with one another, or enter office-like virtual spaces to foster a work-like environment. However, there is a surprising lack of research investigating how avatar presentation affects group collaboration, on both the individual and group level, with the added variable of environment. The present research investigates how creative brainstorming in virtual group settings is affected by avatar styles, environment, and an interplay between these two main elements of social VR platforms. We show that when given the choice, participants overwhelmingly prefer to embody fanciful-styled avatars as opposed to humanoid in both creative and business-style environments during a brainstorming task. Choosing such avatars led participants to report increased comfort and ease in engaging with their partner, as well as more potent feelings of creativity. Such results demonstrate that creative freedom in avatar choice matters more than using environment or situational context as a proxy in decision making. We expect that the findings of our research will catalyze reflection for developers and designers of social VR applications, namely those offering business or productivity-styled platforms, on what avatars their users truly want to embody and what should be offered to them.