| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 7, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 7, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2007627 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Dan Cosley
dcosley@nsf.gov (703)292-8832 IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $373,142.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $373,142.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1156 HIGH ST SANTA CRUZ CA US 95064-1077 (831)459-5278 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA US 95064-1077 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | HCC-Human-Centered Computing |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Meetings are essential to getting things done in the workplace. Workplaces are adopting networked meetings, such as video conferencing, to save costs, support multi-location teams, and reduce pandemic health risks. Yet, video conferencing is limited in how it supports team communication and connection. This project explores building social virtual reality (VR) technology to improve networked meetings. VR shows promise as a technology for supporting meetings, in new ways, because it puts team members in a shared media space, which allows for familiar communication tactics (such as turning toward someone who is talking and gesturing with your hands). VR also allows adding helpful enhancements to meeting situations, such as changing how the room looks (from a boardroom to breakroom), and providing easy-to-use digital tools (such as anonymous voting or timers). This project will develop social VR tools to improve face-to-face meetings by helping participants balance participation, time manage, come to decisions, stick to an agenda, and achieve social connection and support for ideas. These innovations have the potential to use VR to make online meetings more effective and satisfying.
To investigate how social VR technology can enhance networked meetings, this project will (1) use a research-through-design approach to iteratively conceptualize and develop novel technical social augmentations in networked VR, motivated by theories of team meetings and interpersonal communication; (2) perform controlled laboratory and more ecologically valid field studies; and (3) develop theory and implications for design of social augmentation networked meetings in VR. The team will build an extensible VR testbed to enable iterative, rapid prototyping. Thus, expected research contributions for socially augmented VR networked meetings include a testbed, prototypes, lab and field study findings regarding the efficacy of particular social augmentations, theory, and implications for design.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project researched VR as an alternative to video conferencing. Meetings are essential to getting things done in the workplace. However, video conferencing is limited in how it supports team communication and connection. The research team investigated using social VR technology to improve networked meetings, through a rigorous design process that resulted in several unique prototypes of meeting tools for use in social VR. These tools were then tested out with teams to see whether and how they could support communication and connection.
These prototypes comprised a toolkit that included: (1) an integrated conversation visualization tool that meeting participants can use to balance their conversation, (2) a curated set of avatars within an avatar ‘changing room’ (informed by our study of preferred avatars and environments), (3) a modular architecture kit for users to prototype their own spaces (informed by the same study), (4) a traveling meeting platform that supported easier time management as participants moved through space, and 5) an emotion communication intervention, developed to allow users to send affective signals to one another within the environment, based on research that identified an opportunity space in supporting emotional expression in VR meetings.
The research team performed both controlled laboratory studies as well as ecologically valid field studies of these tools, and developed theory and implications for design of social augmentation in networked meetings in VR. The team also innovated prototyping methods to improve the design of such tools. Overall, research contributions included the prototyped tools (released on a publicly available website), lab and field study findings as well as methods and theory contributions and implications for design.
Last Modified: 03/06/2025
Modified by: Katherine Isbister
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