Social Density and its Impact on Behaviour in Virtual Environments

Virtual environments make it possible to connect and collaborate in social immersive realities, but there are still open questions about the influence of their design on the user experience. We conducted a study with 48 participants divided into groups of 6, completing conversational tasks in an instrumented virtual environment. Using a mix-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods (interviews, questionnaires, conversation and movement analysis), we compared between two virtual environment designs. We found that the social density (or effective capacity) of the designed virtual environment influenced the quality of interaction between the participants.