Creative Social VR Practices in Connected Environments

dmi: ADMC 2020 Impact the Future by Design

Creative Social VR Practices in Connected Environments:

The 5G Lift for Retails in Digital Urban Context Heejung Kwon, Ph.D. Information & Interaction Design, Underwood International College, Yonsei University

Andrew Hudson-Smith, Professor of Digital Urban Systems The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL

Time : Thursday, 06 August 2020, 10 -11 am (EDT) Track 2 Session 1

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Introduction • Social VR, the new digital ecology − “What is home?” − Research Questions • First, how will the interaction between ecological conditions, and human cognitions shape the requirements of emerging experience architectures?

• Second, what digital instruments will facilitate and enhance the distributed collaborations among users?

• Lastly, what model will explain the dynamics between the normative evolvement, and digital instruments as social infrastructures? dmi: ADMC 2020

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Theoretical Background • Social Commercial Features (Kolesnichenko, 2019) 1) Embodied Locomotion (teleportation, flying, jumping, walking) 2) Avatar Aesthetics (visual and behavioural fidelity, avatar selection, appearances, customization) 3) Personal Space (avatar personal bubbles) 4) Social Mechanics (friending, emoting, muting, blocking, etc.)

5) Avatar’s Relation to Virtual Identity (such as personalization affordances of avatars) dmi: ADMC 2020

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High Level Analysis of Avatar Affordance in Social VR Application (Kolesnichenko et al, 2019) Facebook Spaces

Mozilla Hubs

High Fidelity

Rec Room

AltspaceVR

Anyland

VRChat

Embodied Locomotion: Teleportation

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Other Navigation Mechanics

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Create Custom Worlds

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Default Avatar Selection

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In-world Avatar Customization

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Import Avatar

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Share Custom Avatar

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Humanoid Avatars

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Non-humanoid Avatars

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Photo-generated Personal Avatar

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Built-in Facial Expressions

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Emoting System

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Personal Space Mechanics

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Embodied Social Mechanics

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Unique Affordances

Image Recognition

Import Media File in VR

Platform Creation Tools

Group Travel

Cross-platform Support

In-world Creation Tools

Import Custom Avatar

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Theoretical Background • Social Play (Isbister, 2010) − Contextual Factors − Motivational Factors − Conceptual and Theoretical Grounding • Social Learning • Emotional Contagion • Physical Feedback Loop dmi: ADMC 2020

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Theoretical Background • Prosocial Interaction (McVeigh-Schultz, 2018) − In VR worlds, user experience interests escalates emotional and social aspects of everyday usages. − UX research concerns focus on how embodied digital spaces amplify emotional experiences, and how it changes people’s interactions even more. − People tend to be more friendly, or sometimes more aggressive, or sometimes extremely raged. − What is “being social” in virtual world? Or how pro-social behaviours affect the interactions in virtual worlds? dmi: ADMC 2020

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Recursive Identities • Social VR Retail Model − An avatar is a pivotal substance that proposes and operates social relationships (Kolesnichenko, 2019) − Component-based Social VR avatar commerce is a unit architecture that builds up meta-social VR worlds, which is equivalent to what city is for society. − Figure 1 shows the Sansar project inworld merchant system UI. Sansar project corporate system only mediates the distribution of user-created fashion items in the cross-channel of inworld and web interfaces. dmi: ADMC 2020

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Recursive Identities

Figure 2. The Aneja’s recursive avatar creation research(2019) presented two pipelines for retargeting an expression from human to the avatar. A) Expression Synthesis via Action Units Controls. Its pipeline takes a human video as an input, recognizes 12 FACS Action Units from the user’s detected face and synthesizes the same expression on the avatar’s face. B) Expression Synthesis via Bone Position Controls. Its pipeline takes a human video as an input, detects the user’s face, generates 3D parameters on the primary character ’Ray’ through a 3D-CNN and synthesizes the same expression on the avatar’s face.

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Recursive Spaces

Figure 3. Hierarchical Recursion Generating Fractal Self-Similarity: Top-Down (left) to Bottom-Up (right) (Batty & Hudson-Smith, 2007) dmi: ADMC 2020

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Recursive Spaces

Figure 4. VRChat Home Kit: A shell of recursive world dmi: ADMC 2020

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Recursive Spaces

Figure 5. VRChat Recursive instances that unlimitedly copy the original world dmi: ADMC 2020

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Research Method • Artefact Analysis and Model − Artefact Models in 3D worlds − The 3 Tier model of participants, application artefacts, and controller suggested how we should standardise the design artefacts analysis targets in VR environments. dmi: ADMC 2020

Figure 6. Principal VW layout with space 'dimensions' and application 'artefacts' (Christiansson, 2001) Impact the Future by Design

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Data Collection & Analysis Table 2. Social VR Components Category

Creation

Social

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Features

Functions

Avatar Customization

Identity Creation

Store

Exchanges

Digital Currency

Pro-social Market

World Building

Environment Creation

Events

VR Meetup

Discord Connection

Tutorial/Technical Help

Who’s online

Connectivity

Who’s near me

Voice Interaction

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Data Collection & Analysis

Figure 7. Recursively Embedding the Virtual City (Batty & Hudson-Smith, 2007)

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Results & Conclusions Table 3. Cross-channel Artefacts of Social Play Channel Social VR Inworld

Discord

Web

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Artefact Avatar Customization Shopping Interface Currency Market 3D Building Emote Controller Communication (Voice/Chat) Avatar Locomotion Team Features Communication with Service Providers Event Help/Tutorial

Action World Quest

Code #Creation #Internal

World Quest Support Peer Leaning Wider Connection

#Information #External #Community Hub

Administration/Profile Shopping Event Help/Tutorial Downloads Program Updates

Shopping Learning Administration

#Backend #Trade

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Social VR Cross-Channel Cloud Model Locomotion

Aggregation

Avatar

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Future Studies • The Architecture of Digital Labyrinth − Spatial cognition and human perception in connected environments of twin world − HCI models for AI: Autonomous systems and human creativity

• More Research Questions − What will be a locus of attention when we are collectively migrating digital spaces that are embodied to contain and transit multi-layered experiences of human and artificial intelligences? − How will the shell of 5G network spaces transform markets, and their values?

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For More Information https://www.facebook.com/IoT.UX/

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