A Design Space for Social Presence in VR.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, creating believable social virtual environments to substitute face-to-face interactions became vital. Social presence is essential for creating realistic and engaging social virtual reality (VR) experiences. However, mimicking realistic social presence within virtual environments is an ongoing research endeavor. In this paper, we fill this gap by reviewing (N = 347) and analyzing (N = 68) the existing literature about social VR across four venues during the past 9 years to elicit a novel design space for techniques and design parameters that enhance social presence and identify open research opportunities and common design trends across various social VR domain areas. We conclude that asymmetric interactions are under-explored due to their novelty. Additionally, self-embodiment and non-verbal cues are key features for social presence in social VR applications. We envision that our work will aid in shaping users’ virtual experience through building believable social VR experiences.