Human Computer Interactions and Task Performance

Abstract

As humans start to spend more time in collaborative virtual environment (CVE), coordinating the interaction between the humans in these environments is becoming increasingly important. We have been investigating one aspect of such coordination, namely the issue of an avatar’s “personal space”. Intuitively it can be expected that CVE users might decrease their task performance when their avatar personal space is invaded since this socially unacceptable act tends to cause anxiety. To investigate the effect of personal space invasion on a user’s task performance, we have conducted a controlled experiment measuring the effect of personal space invasion on a user’s task performance. The results of the experiment suggest that a user whose personal space is invaded performs more slowly than a user whose avatar’s personal space is not invaded.