Our team recently presented a compelling study by Dr. Eugene Kukshinov at the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24) on July 5th. The presentation was titled "Disembodied, Asocial, and Unreal: How Users Reinterpret Designed Affordances of Social VR."
Abstract:
In the realm of Social Virtual Reality (SVR), affordances are intended to facilitate embodied social interactions within virtual environments. However, this research highlights the critical distinction between the intended designs of SVR platforms and how users perceive and interpret these affordances. Drawing from qualitative survey data collected from 100 SVR users, we discovered that user practices diverge significantly from the designs, complicating the conventional view of SVR as purely embodied social spaces.
Our findings demonstrate the dynamic behavior of users who reinterpret and reconfigure the affordances of SVR platforms, leading to a spectrum of interactions—from asocial usage to actions that expose the limitations of embodied communication. By foregrounding user needs and expectations, this research presents valuable insights that can inform the future design of SVR platforms.
Funding:
This study was funded, in part, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Lupina Foundation, and the Games Institute Seed fund.
For further details on the study, you can access the publication here: Disembodied, Asocial, and Unreal: How Users Reinterpret Designed Affordances of Social VR.
