Does Task Matter? Task-Dependent Effects of Cross-Device Collaboration on Social Presence

In this work, we explored asymmetric collaboration under two distinct tasks: collaborative sorting and conversational talking tasks. We answer the research question of how different tasks impact the user experience in asymmetric interaction. Our mixed design compared one symmetric and one asymmetric interaction and two tasks, assessing self-perception (presence, embodiment), other-perception (co-presence, social presence, plausibility), and task perception (task load, enjoyment). 52 participants collaborated in dyads on the two tasks, either using head-mounted displays (HMDs) or one participant using an HMD and the other a desktop setup. Results indicate that differences in social presence diminished or disappeared during the purely conversational talking task in comparison to the sorting task. This indicates that differences in how we perceive a social interaction, which is caused by asymmetric interaction, only occur during specific use cases. These findings underscore the critical role of task characteristics in shaping users’ social XR experiences and highlight that asymmetric collaboration can be effective across different use cases and is even on par with symmetric interaction during conversations.