User wants to make it easier to engage with others while in Social VR

[chenchen2015]

Supporting Stories

• Katie George is a CS grad working on a VR project at the Knight Lab. She thinks it's hard to be social in VR as it's difficult to engage with others. People automatically stay in their own space (without clear sign or indication of social engagement)

Identified Issues

• Social VR need ways to identify privacy and indicate engagement in order to make it less difficult.

Existing Solutions

[chenchen2015]

What makes Katie think it's difficult to engage with others in social VR?

Here's my interpretation:

• Lack of clear social cues think about trying to engage with other people in a crowded cocktail party. What most people do in this scenario is they automatically choose people with preferred social cues, e.g. eye contact, gesture, appearance, etc. None of these cues exist in social VR apps yet, which effectively making it a anonymous 3D chat room. I am not talking about adding social cues just for visual effect, e.g. adding arbitrary eye or facial movement to the avatar while the use speaks. Social VR apps need interpretable visual cues to reflect other people's status like their mood, willingness to talk, and even their personal background like their profession.

[adammy123]

Not in scope of ShareVR's design direction anymore.