Evaluating the Effect of Audience in a Virtual Reality Presentation Training Tool

TL;DR

This paper presents a VR training tool with realistic 3D scanned audiences to improve public speaking skills, showing user preference for VR over no environment, though audience presence preference varies.

Contribution

The study introduces a VR environment with realistic 3D scanned audiences for public speaking training and evaluates user preferences and acceptance.

Findings

Users prefer VR training over no environment.

Preference for audience presence is mixed.

VR environment is accepted regardless of audience presence.

Abstract

Public speaking is an essential skill in everyone's professional or academic career. Nevertheless, honing this skill is often tricky because training in front of a mirror does not give feedback or inspire the same anxiety as present-ing in front of an audience. Further, most people do not always have access to the place where the presentation will happen. In this research, we developed a Virtual Reality (VR) environment to assist in improving people's presentation skills. Our system uses 3D scanned people to create more realistic scenarios. We conducted a study with twelve participants who had no prior experience with VR. We validated our virtual environment by analyzing whether it was preferred to no VR system and accepted regardless of the existence of a virtual audience. Our results show that users overwhelmingly prefer to use the VR system as a tool to help them improve their public speaking skills than training in an empty environment. However, the preference for an audience is mixed.