We conducted a within-subjects study to examine how realistic faces and cartoon faces on avatars effect communication, task satisfaction, sense of presence, and emotional state perception in mixed reality meetings. Over the course of two weeks, six groups of co-workers (14people) held recurring meetings using Microsoft HoloLens2 devices, each person embodying a personal full-body avatar with either a realistic face or cartoon face. Half of the groups started with the realistic face avatar and switched to the cartoon face version halfway through (RC condition), and the other half with the cartoon-face avatar first (CR condition). For this paper, we focus on our results of emotion felt and perceived. We found that participants reported more positive emotions with the realistic face avatar but only in the RC condition. This positive emotion also seemed to have reduced over time. The realistic face avatar also caused more error in judgement of their colleagues emotions, and again this was worse in the RC condition.
Research brief
By Georgiana Cristina Dobre, Marta Wilczkowiak, Marco Gillies, Sylvia Xueni Pan, and Sean Rintel.
Full text not available on this site. This brief is based on the abstract only.
Takeaway: In mixed reality meetings, avatar realism cuts both ways and order matters. Co-workers who started with realistic faces felt more positive than later with cartoon faces, though this seemed to fade. Realistic faces also made colleagues' emotions harder to judge, especially for those who started with them.
Research question
How do realistic versus cartoon avatar faces affect the emotions people feel, and their judgements of colleagues' emotions, in mixed reality meetings?
How to cite
Georgiana Cristina Dobre, Marta Wilczkowiak, Marco Gillies, Sylvia Xueni Pan, and Sean Rintel. 2024. Avatars in mixed reality meetings: A field study of avatar facial realism on felt and perceived emotion. EMRN 2024: A Metaverse For Good.
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{dobre2024avatars,
author = {Dobre, Georgiana Cristina and Wilczkowiak, Marta and Gillies, Marco and Pan, Sylvia Xueni and Rintel, Sean},
title = {Avatars in mixed reality meetings: A field study of avatar facial realism on felt and perceived emotion},
organization = {European Metaverse Research Network},
booktitle = {EMRN 2024: A Metaverse For Good},
year = {2024},
month = {April},
url = {https://seanrintel.com/publications/avatars-in-mixed-reality-meetings-a-field-study-of-avatar-facial-realism-on-felt-and-perceived-emotion.html},
}