Analyzing Virtual Social Interaction
Many Different Use Cases for Virtual Social Interaction
In our VR Lab we develop use cases in which immersive social interaction can unfold its
potential, e.g. for marketing, virtual onboarding, training, team collaboration, product
development or therapies. Designing such experiences requires researching user
behaviours and perceptions.
Example: E-Health and Therapeutics
Reducing Speaking Anxiety: Research on Influence of Audience Gaze on Speaker’s Anxiety
Levels
Example: Moderated Meeting / Educational Training
Using spatial team exercises to increase team identity and performance: Research on the
influence of spatial exploration on social presence and recall, also for special user types
Example: Customer Relationship Management (VR Commerce)
Immersive Sales & Service Offerings: Research into influence of avatar features on avatar
on presence and customer trust and customer satisfaction levels
Rich immersive interpersonal Encounters between sellers and customers in VR
Seller Avatar explains a complex product. Test users perceived personal competence, a
rich feedback channel and a relaxing athmosphere that fully grasped their attention.
VR Commerce Interaction with a seller avatar to inform about products
Screenshots of Use Case Examples
ChatGPT-based Agents offer product consultation
Customer interacts with an conversational AI-bot based on ChatGPT. The user can ask
questions about a choice of products. Respondents to this scenario reported good
experiences. The agent used activity that decreased the perception of idle time for
generating answers.
VR Commerce Interaction with a automated conversational seller agent
Different Users position around objects (e.g. products or exhibits)
Different users explore a room together to examine an exhibited object. In our
experiments we studied how they studied the object while minding the locations of others,
how they avoid collision, what distances they take and if they explore the object from
multiple angles. The exploration processes can be visualized as heatmaps to study, e.g.
product encounters.
Social Proxemics as the study of how different users position in relation to objects in a virtual place
Transformed Social Interaction to assist autistic VR users in virtual interviews
To overcome challenges of (job) interviews for autistic people, a transformed social
interaction was created that helps to reduce social stimuli and even offers asymmetric
realities for both participants (interviewer & interviewee)
Top: Complex environment and adjusted gaze holding for interviewer. Bottom: reduced view for interviewee.
