Social VR as the New Normal?

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online meetings have become the new normal amongst business professionals. The usage of video conferencing services such as Zoom has skyrocketed, and the usage of Social Virtual Reality (VR) services have also been taken under consideration to be the new normal as it enables users to have a spatial online presence; nonetheless, the usage of Social VR has been considerably lower compared to video conferencing services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the user interactions of business professionals regarding the web-based Social VR platform, Mozilla Hubs, and suggest alterations regarding the user experience in order to understand why the usage of Social VR is low amongst business professionals and to promote the usage of the platform that could resolve the issue having a lack of spatial presence in the online arena.