TeamPortal: Exploring Virtual Reality Collaboration Through Shared and Manipulating Parallel Views

TL;DR

TeamPortal enhances VR collaboration by enabling shared and manipulated parallel views, significantly improving efficiency and social presence in complex tasks, with variants further optimizing performance and user willingness to adopt.

Contribution

This paper introduces TeamPortal, a novel VR collaboration system with shared perspectives, and provides empirical evidence of its benefits through user studies.

Findings

TeamPortal reduces movement and increases efficiency in complex tasks.

SnapTeamPortal+ and DropTeamPortal+ improve task efficiency and adoption willingness.

SnapTeamPortal+ reduces co-presence.

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) offers a unique collaborative experience, with parallel views playing a pivotal role in Collaborative Virtual Environments by supporting the transfer and delivery of items. Sharing and manipulating partners' views provides users with a broader perspective that helps them identify the targets and partner actions. We proposed TeamPortal accordingly and conducted two user studies with 72 participants (36 pairs) to investigate the potential benefits of interactive, shared perspectives in VR collaboration. Our first study compared ShaView and TeamPortal against a baseline in a collaborative task that encompassed a series of searching and manipulation tasks. The results show that TeamPortal significantly reduced movement and increased collaborative efficiency and social presence in complex tasks. Following the results, the second study evaluated three variants: TeamPortal+, SnapTeamPortal+, and DropTeamPortal+. The results show that both SnapTeamPortal+ and DropTeamPortal+ improved task efficiency and willingness to further adopt these technologies, though SnapTeamPortal+ reduced co-presence. Based on the findings, we proposed three design implications to inform the development of future VR collaboration systems.