The effect of facial cue placement in virtual collaboration

Abstract Sharing facial expressions plays an important role in communicating emotions during interaction. However, in collaborative tasks with heavy visual and physical demands, it can be difficult to share or notice these expressions. Virtual Reality (VR) offers opportunities to overcome these limitations by enabling non-verbal cues to be positioned flexibly in the shared environment so they remain visible and salient. Yet, how such cues help in visually and physically demanding collaboration remains unclear. This research investigates how facial cue placement affects collaboration during virtual object interaction. We developed a VR prototype that shares facial expressions using a 3-Dimensional avatar head, placed on a collaborator’s hand or task-related objects. A user study based on 30 participants evaluated the impact of these placements showed that only cues placed “on hand" had increased participants’ gaze activities to where the placement was, whether consciously or automatically. Interestingly the absence of facial cues boost participants predictions toward their acting partner’s satisfaction level, suggesting hand cues may hinder emotional attribution. No clear performance differences were observed compared to a traditional VR setup. We discuss the design and practical implications of facial cue placement and future research directions for emotional awareness in VR collaboration.