Designing for Heterogeneous Cross-Device Collaboration and Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

Collaboration in virtual reality (VR) across heterogeneous devices poses special challenges for supporting manipulation, navigation, and communication. To explore these, we developed a collaborative VR system that allows interaction across two distinct interfaces: a mobile touchscreen device (Handheld User) and a head-mounted display (HMD User). In a qualitative evaluation, we analyzed how these interfaces affect social roles and interactions. Our observations reveal that Handheld Users achieved presence in the virtual environment despite the non-immersive interface and assumed similar spatial positions in a conversational scenario as they would in the real world. In a collaborative building task, we found leadership roles not tied to immersion, but potentially influenced by users’ eye-level. Further, Handheld Users exhibited stronger movement patterns than HMD Users. Based on such behavioral patterns, we contribute a classification framework for Handheld Users that facilitates future analysis of interactions in shared virtual environments through handheld devices. Finally, we offer a number of design considerations for collaborative cross-device VR, which are based on our observations and exemplified in our presented system.

OzCHI '20: 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Sydney, NSW, Australia, December 2020

Patrick Aggergaard Olin, Department of Computer Science Aarhus University, Denmark
Ahmad Mohammad Issa, Department of Computer Science Aarhus University, Denmark
Tiare Feuchtner, Department of Computer Science Aarhus University, Denmark
Kaj Grønbæk, Department of Computer Science Aarhus University, Denmark,