Are we in this together?
When we think about social virtual reality, avatars often steal the spotlight. They’re the digital bodies through which we see, move, and meet others in shared 3D spaces. But how much does being able to customise those avatars actually matter when we’re collaborating?
In our new paper, presented at CSCW 2025 by Anna-Leena Macey, we we ran a study in a social VR environment where participants interacted with others using avatars they could customise to different degrees. We wanted to explore if the ability to personalise your avatar change how “present” you feel with someone else, and if it affects the communication during collaboration.
We ran a controlled lab study where pairs of participants worked together to solve a 3D puzzle in social VR. Half used avatars they had personally customised, while the others were assigned simple default avatars. We measured two outcomes: a) social presence (how strongly participants felt “together” with their partner) and b) relational communication (the subtle cues that tell us how warm, involved, or equal an interaction feels).
However, customisation did not seem to make a measurable difference to either social presence or relational communication. Both groups reported very high social presence and positive impressions of their partners, suggesting that the embodied, full-body VR setup itself already provides a strong sense of “being there together.”
Interestingly, we did see hints that customisation might shift attention, and in fact sometimes in unhelpful ways. Participants with customised avatars occasionally seemed more self-focused, sometimes exploring their embodied avatar in virtual mirrors while the task was ongoing. Meanwhile, assigned avatars may have worked a bit like uniforms, reducing distractions and putting both partners on equal footing.
So, while avatar design is often seen as central to VR experiences and outcomes, our findings suggest that in task-oriented collaboration, and with full-body tracking immersive environments, they might not matter as much.
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Macey, A. L., Bujić, M., Belousov, A., Kerous, B., Järvelä, S., & Hamari, J. (2025). Are We in This Together? Investigating the Relationship of Avatar Customisation, Social Presence, and Communication Outcomes in Collaborative Embodied Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(7), 1-20.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3757552
Authors: Anna-Leena Macey, Mila Bujić, Anatolii Belousov, Bojan Kerous, Simo Järvelä, and Juho Hamari
Funding: This research was funded by the Academy of Finland (342144; ’POSTEMOTION’ / 359173; ’UNITE Flagship’), Kone Foundation (02008478; ’DIAL’), and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (00230774).
