Virtual reality body swapping to improve the training of soft skills and self-assessment

Immersive Virtual Reality applications have been proven to be effective in training soft skills and in managing anxiety. Many studies on this technology have focused on public speaking and on the treatment of phobias. Apparently, there is an interesting domain represented by job interviews that has not been fully considered yet. In fact, most of the work done in this context leveraged desktop-based Virtual Reality, a configuration which does not enable to take full advantage of the potential of immersive technologies. Training before having a job interview, however, could be a precious asset for students who are about to finish their studies and need to apply for job positions, especially if they have never experienced one. This training could indeed be done with traditional methods; by means of Virtual Reality, though, an individual can see him or herself from the outside and better assess his or her performance. Compared with, e.g., practicing while watching in the mirror, there is so much more that can be done in immersive Virtual Reality. This technology offers the possibility to observe the whole scene where the job interview takes place, both from an external viewpoint as an observer without a direct involvement, as well as from another person’s perspective as if his or her virtual body was that of the individual being interviewed. Based on the above premises, this thesis work explores the two configurations above, aiming at disclosing which one could be more useful to self-assess an individual performance while answering questions in a job interview. Rather than actually developing a tool to support practicing in this scenario, the ultimate goal is to identify how such a tool could be most effective, i.e., whether observing the interview from an “objective” or “neutral” viewpoint or from the “subjective” viewpoint of the interviewer whose job is to carry out the evaluation.