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Proxemics and Social Interactions in an Instrumented Virtual Reality Workshop

Williamson, J. R. , Li, J., Vinayagamoorthy, V., Shamma, D. A. and Cesar, P. (2021) Proxemics and Social Interactions in an Instrumented Virtual Reality Workshop. In: ACM Conferences on Human Computer Interaction, Yokohama, Japan, 08-12 May 2021, p. 253. ISBN 9781450380966 (doi: 10.1145/3411764.3445729)

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Abstract

Virtual environments (VEs) can create collaborative and social spaces, which are increasingly important in the face of remote work and travel reduction. Recent advances, such as more open and widely available platforms, create new possibilities to observe and analyse interaction in VEs. Using a custom instrumented build of Mozilla Hubs to measure position and orientation, we conducted an academic workshop to facilitate a range of typical workshop activities. We analysed social interactions during a keynote, small group breakouts, and informal networking/hallway conversations. Our mixed-methods approach combined environment logging, observations, and semi-structured interviews. The results demonstrate how small and large spaces influenced group formation, shared attention, and personal space, where smaller rooms facilitated more cohesive groups while larger rooms made small group formation challenging but personal space more flexible. Beyond our findings, we show how the combination of data and insights can fuel collaborative spaces’ design and deliver more effective virtual workshops.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Additional Information:	This research was partially funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program under the grant agreement #762111 “VRTogether” http://vrtogether.eu/ (accessed January 2021). This research was partially funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 ERC project ViAjeRo, grant agreement #835197. https://viajero-project.org/ (accessed January 2021).
Status:	Published
Refereed:	Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:	Williamson, Dr Julie
Authors:	Williamson, J. R., Li, J., Vinayagamoorthy, V., Shamma, D. A., and Cesar, P.
College/School:	College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
ISBN:	9781450380966
Copyright Holders:	Copyright © 2021 Association for Computer Machinery
First Published:	First published in Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21): 253
Publisher Policy:	Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher
Data DOI:	https://github.com/ayman/hubs-research-acm-chi-2021

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Deposit and Record Details

ID Code:	234460
Depositing User:	Dr Julie Williamson
Datestamp:	19 Feb 2021 10:12
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2022 16:41
Date of acceptance:	8 May 2021
Date of first online publication:	May 2021
Date Deposited:	11 June 2021
Data Availability Statement:	Yes