Social Interaction and Self-Perception in Social Virtual Reality

Open Human-Computer Interaction Master Project Thesis Internship No Affiliation

Motivation

Social Virtual Reality (SVR) allows users to meet, interact, and socialize in shared virtual environments through embodied avatars (Freeman and Acena, 2021; McVeigh-Schultz et al., 2019). These embodied social encounters can increase presence and co-presence and shape how users experience both others and themselves (Latoschik et al., 2019; Merz et al., 2024). At the same time, SVR introduces new forms of social interactions that differ from traditional online media, for example through asymmetric setups, avatar mediation, and spatial interaction. Despite the growing popularity of SVR platforms, many open questions remain regarding how users communicate, coordinate, and perceive themselves in these environments.

Goal

The aim of this project is to investigate social interaction and self-perception in social virtual reality.

Tasks

• Literature research on social interaction and embodiment in SVR
• Design and/or development of a SVR application based on RealityStack
• User study, evaluation, and conducting interviews (lab study and/or field research)

Prerequisits

• Experience with Unity
• Experience with conducting user studies
• Optional: Interest in actively exploring SVR environments

Literature

G. Freeman and D. Acena, “Hugging from A Distance: Building Interpersonal Relationships in Social Virtual Reality,” in ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences, in IMX ’21. ACM, Jun. 2021. doi: 10.1145/3452918.3458805.

M. E. Latoschik, F. Kern, J.-P. Stauffert, A. Bartl, M. Botsch, and J.-L. Lugrin, “Not Alone Here?! Scalability and User Experience of Embodied Ambient Crowds in Distributed Social Virtual Reality,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 2134–2144, May 2019, doi: 10.1109/tvcg.2019.2899250.

J. McVeigh-Schultz, A. Kolesnichenko, and K. Isbister, “Shaping Pro-Social Interaction in VR: An Emerging Design Framework,” in Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in CHI ’19. ACM, May 2019. doi: 10.1145/3290605.3300794.

C. Merz, C. Wienrich, and M. E. Latoschik, “Does Voice Matter? The Effect of Verbal Communication and Asymmetry on the Experience of Collaborative Social XR,” in 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), IEEE, Oct. 2024, pp. 1127–1136. doi: 10.1109/ismar62088.2024.00129.

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg