Exploring Collaboration in a Blended Reality System: A User-Perspective Study

The development of eXtended Reality (XR) technologies has led to an increase in the use of virtual spaces to help support collaboration. However, collaboration between physical and virtual environments is often considered solely with respect to how successfully the XR technology has been used to integrate virtual and physical worlds. In contrast, this study explored how participants collaborated within a Blended Reality (BR) system, with the overall aim of identifying the benefits and challenges associated with BR systems during group collaboration. Analysis of interview and video observations highlighted various beneficial affordances and considerations associated with different elements of the BR system. There were benefits associated with the physical, virtual and blended space as well as considerations relating to the task design and system design. Further work should seek to determine how to design BR spaces to better suit the collaborative context.