Social and spatial factors affect group experiences in virtual reality stories
Exploring spatial configuration and group familiarity when co-watching 360-degree stories in social virtual reality
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Watching 360-degree stories in virtual reality is often done alone, but sometimes people watch together. The authors studied how the space around people and how well they know each other affects their experience when watching these stories together in virtual reality. They found that smaller shared spaces made people feel closer to others, but also made the experience more mentally tiring. Also, people who knew each other better paid more attention to the story but felt more physically and mentally taxed. These findings help designers create better shared VR story experiences by balancing closeness and comfort.
What this means in practice
- •For virtual reality content creators: Design shared VR storytelling experiences that manage space and group familiarity to balance engagement and user comfort.
- •For social vr platform developers: Adjust spatial and social settings to improve social presence and reduce cognitive load in multi-user VR story sessions.
Authors
Portia Wang, Monique Santoso, Yujie Tao, Jeremy Bailenson
Abstract
While traditional cinematic viewing is often characterized as a social experience, engaging with immersive stories is predominantly researched as an individual activity. This mismatch becomes increasingly problematic in social virtual reality (VR), where features designed for typical social activities (e.g., virtual locomotion, spatial and social context) can become meaningful levers for shaping the user experience. To address our limited understanding of these effects, we conducted three exploratory experiments (N$_1$=109, N$_2$=116, N$_3$=88) examining how spatial boundary type, size of allocated personal space, and group familiarity influence co-watching 360-degree stories in social VR. Results shows that small communal spatial boundaries heightened social presence towards others compared to individual boundaries, but also increased mental demand. Reducing the size of the personal spatial boundary increased social presence towards others but also increased disorientation and frustration. Finally, participants with higher group familiarity reported stronger attentional focus on the story, as well as higher spatial presence and social presence towards story characters, but also reported greater physical and perceptual demand. We discuss systematic tradeoffs between engagement and cognitive effort, and suggest practical guidelines for designing shared immersive narrative experiences.