Towards Immersive Collaborative Sensemaking
Ying Yang, Tim Dwyer, Michael Wybrow, Benjamin Lee, Maxime Cordeil,, Mark Billinghurst, Bruce H. Thomas

TL;DR
This study compares immersive VR and desktop interfaces for collaborative sensemaking, finding VR enhances interaction and engagement but yields similar task performance to traditional methods.
Contribution
The paper introduces systematic measures and a new analysis tool for assessing collaborative experiences in VR environments.
Findings
VR and desktop interfaces show similar speed and accuracy.
VR promotes more conversations and object interactions.
Participants in VR contribute more equally.
Abstract
When collaborating face-to-face, people commonly use the surfaces and spaces around them to perform sensemaking tasks, such as spatially organising documents, notes or images. However, when people collaborate remotely using desktop interfaces they no longer feel like they are sharing the same space. This limitation may be overcome through collaboration in immersive environments, which simulate the physical in-person experience. In this paper, we report on a between-groups study comparing collaborations on image organisation tasks, in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment to more conventional desktop conferencing. Collecting data from 40 subjects in groups of four, we measured task performance, user behaviours, collaboration engagement and awareness. Overall, the VR and desktop interface resulted in similar speed, accuracy and social presence rating, but we observed more…
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