Design and evaluation of virtual environments mechanisms to support remote collaboration on complex process diagrams

摘要

Many organizational analysis tasks are solved by collaborating teams. In technology-mediated collaborations, enabling relevant visual cues is a core issue with existing technology. We explore whether avatars can provide relevant cues in collaborative virtual environments. To do so, we develop a research prototype for a collaborative virtual environment that utilises avatars to improve workspace awareness in collaborative tasks. We test this solution through two studies, qualitative and quantitative, in which participants have to collaborate to jointly validate and correct a diagrammatic model of operational procedures.