A “beyond being there” for VR meetings: envisioning the future of remote work

Abstract

In the 21st century workplace, a great deal of social interaction occurs in meetings. However, research on meetings – and in particular workplace meetings – has long demonstrated the challenges involved in running meetings effectively (Geimer et al., 2015; Hackman & Morris, 1975; Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012; Kocsis et al., 2015; Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2013; LehmannWillenbrock & Kauffeld, 2010; Mroz et al., 2018; Steiner, 1972). Even prior to COVID-19, research identified the increasing role played by remote meeting technology and recognized virtual meetings as an important area of challenge and opportunity for organizations (Allison et al., 2015; Lindeblad et al., 2016). In 2020, surveys of CIOs suggested that the broad shifts to remote (or hybrid) work associated with COVID are likely to continue post-pandemic (Chavez-Dreyfuss, Chavez-Dreyfuss,). An important societal reason for supporting this shift is the need to reduce carbon footprint related to travel, toward the urgent goal of mitigating climate change. As greater demands are placed on remote work, research will need to meet these new challenges. HCI has a long track record of investigating workplace meetings as a site of intervention and has broadly demonstrated the role that technological mediation can play in supporting interpersonal communication among teams (Bergstrom & Karahalios, 2012, Bergstrom and Karahalios, 2007b; DiMicco et al., 2007, 2004; J. Kim & Shah, 2016; T. Kim et al., 2008; Leshed et al., 2009, 2007, 2010; Pentland et al., 2012; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2013; Tennent & Jung, 2019). While face-to-face meetings have been shown to be superior to screen-mediated meetings along certain dimensions of proxemics and interpersonal awareness (Kraut et al., 2002), technologically mediated meetings have also been demonstrated to be more effective than face-to face-meetings in certain cases (Gudjohnsen, 2014; Hollan & Stornetta, 1992). Along these lines, Hollan and Stornetta have argued that electronic media are best positioned to support new kinds of communicative affordances rather than imitate “the mechanisms of face-to-face [interaction]” (Hollan & Stornetta, 1992). The rise of XR (VR, augmented reality, and mixed reality) has brought with it a new set of interactional parameters to explore in shaping social experience (Roth et al., 2019; Slater et al., 2010; Won et al., 2015; Yee & Bailenson, 2007). While social VR experiences currently lack the richness of facial expression cues that can be experienced with video conferencing, some anticipate this gap could be overcome by systems that leverage real-time facial recognition to drive avatar expressions in virtual reality (Cha et al., 2020; Schwartz et al., 2020). Investment in the area of facial recognition by VR industry players like Facebook Reality Labs and DecaGear suggests that commercial innovations may eventually support rich facial expression cues in VR meetings. Likewise, peripheral devices like physical keyboards can be supported in virtual reality (Bovet et al., 2018; Hardawar, 2021), and