An Exploratory Study on Role-Playing for Co-Design in Virtual Reality: Avatars and Familiarity; [가상현실에서 코디자인을 위한 롤플레잉에 관한 탐색적 연구: 아바타와 친밀도를 중심으로]

초록

Background As the increase in non-face-to-face culture leads to the activation of virtual reality, various fields are utilizing it. It is believed that virtual reality can overcome the disadvantages of online co-design in the design field and the inherent drawbacks of traditional role-playing. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore participants’ communication and the experience of a virtual reality co-design workshop by utilizing role-playing. Methods Theoretical research identified the types of role-playing, the presence of avatars, and the interactions and communication between participants in virtual reality. The study also explored narrative communication and verbal expression. A virtual reality co-design workshop using role-playing was conducted, and protocol analysis was carried out to understand the characteristics of verbal and non-verbal communication in group role-playing performances. The use of narrative elements in speech content was also examined through protocol analysis. Post-workshop interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis methodology to derive advantages and disadvantages of role-playing in virtual reality co-design workshops. Results The experimental results showed that there were differences in verbal and non-verbal communication depending on the presence of avatars and the familiarity of the participants. The use of narrative elements in the groups’ speech content also varied according to the stages of the workshop. In the post-interviews, conducting co-design workshops in virtual spaces had several advantages, such as the creation of spaces that felt real, the representation of actions by avatars, and the utilization of non-verbal elements. Conclusions This study is significant in that it proposes types of avatar presence and participant familiarity that can be applied according to the purpose of role-playing, and how to increse the participant’s immersion in virtual reality through a co-design workshop using role-playing in immersive virtual reality wearing HMD devices, which has limited related research. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted educational and non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.

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