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

Abstract: 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.