“Do we need opaque walls?”: Exploring Collaboration Space Design Using Transparency Attributes on the Room Walls in Virtual Reality
[IJHCI] A study demonstrates that wall transparency is a critical design concept in VR collaboration, shaping attention, stress, and collaborative experience.
Tianze Xie, Yuxin Ma, Joongi Shin, Pengcheng An, Seungwoo Je
In International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction HIHC (IJHCI)
Abstract
Effective collaboration depends on the design of collaborative spaces. In particular, prior work has shown that the design of physical room walls impacts people’s attention and stress during collaboration. However, despite the growing adoption of VR for collaboration, room walls have been rarely studied as an important design factor. As the first step, this paper investigates how wall transparency affects the collaborative experience in VR. We compared three levels of transparency (non-transparent, semi-transparent, and no-wall) in terms of their impact on collaborators’ attention, stress, and perceived quality of collaboration through the analysis of the gaze behaviors, physiological responses, and self-reported experience. We observed that non-transparent walls led to less visual distraction, no walls caused less stress during collaboration, and semi-transparent walls caused significant visual distraction and increased stress levels. We conclude that wall transparency is an important design factor in designing collaboration in VR and discuss design implications based on our findings. [doi]
