Systematic Literature Review of Using Virtual Reality as a Social Platform in HCI Community

TL;DR

This systematic review analyzes 94 studies on VR as a social platform in HCI, highlighting its benefits, challenges, and proposing a framework to improve social experiences in virtual environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of VR social interaction research, introduces an evaluation framework, and identifies key research gaps for future exploration.

Findings

VR enhances social interaction through self-representation and immersive environments.

Positive effects include relaxation, engagement, intimacy, and accessibility.

Negative impacts involve harassment and privacy concerns.

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used as a social platform for users to interact and build connections with one another in an immersive virtual environment. Reflecting on the empirical progress in this area of study, a comprehensive review of how VR could be used to support social interaction is required to consolidate existing practices and identify research gaps to inspire future studies. In this work, we conducted a systematic review of 94 publications in the HCI field to examine how VR is designed and evaluated for social purposes. We found that VR influences social interaction through self-representation, interpersonal interactions, and interaction environments. We summarized four positive effects of using VR for socializing, which are relaxation, engagement, intimacy, and accessibility, and showed that it could also negatively affect user social experiences by intensifying harassment experiences and amplifying privacy concerns. We introduce an evaluation framework that outlines the key aspects of social experience: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and interaction experiences. According to the results, we uncover several research gaps and propose future directions for designing and developing VR to enhance social experience.