"Non-verbal communication in Social VR" : Exploring new ways to handshake

Technology has drastically changed the way people communicate with each other: talking and reaching out to someone has become easier, even across great distances, thanks to smartphones and computers. Social networks, later, helped us to expand this even further, allowing us to meet new people from all over the world, share experiences and bond with them from the comfort of our homes. With the advent of Virtual Reality, people felt the need to make online socializing experience more “physical” and “real” thanks to the immersive nature of this technology. This gave way to a new world of communication: Social VR platforms. Here users can create their avatar, customizing it as they prefer and meet old and new friends in a virtual environment (also customizable), where they can play games together, hang out and even attend events thanks to the streaming options. Although Social VR already made the experience quite immersive for the user, these platforms are still lacking when it comes to non-verbal communication. Literature shows that non-verbal communication is usually perceived by the users as a positive experience because it makes the interactions more immersive and similar to offline face-to-face interactions, helping to initiate the conversation also with strangers. It is, therefore, an important component for the immersion of the user that warrants more research attention. The aim of this thesis work is to improve the range of expressivity in non-verbal communication, designing and developing some new interaction options, by building on previous studies on how non-verbal communication is perceived by users. The outcome of the work was, then, tested on target users to understand how these new interactions affect their experience of Social VR and how they could be integrated in the currently available platforms.