Are Two Heads Better than One? Object-focused Collaboration in Distributed Virtual Environments

Paper in proceeding, 2006

Under which conditions has collaboration added value over individual work? How does performance change when using different technologies? These are important questions for industry and for research. This paper addresses them for pairs versus individuals using physical objects and virtual representations for object-focused task-solving. Based upon previous research on pair's performance and experiences for collaboration in a real setting and four different distributed virtual environments (VEs), single-user experimental studies were carried out. The results show that in relation to performance, pairs working in networked CAVE technologies are superior compared to individuals, or pairs working in other distributed settings. In general, social interaction works as a facilitator for this type of task solving in networked VEs. Though, best performance was found in the real setting, with no major difference when comparing individuals versus pairs, working in VEs often were appreciated higher than working with physical objects.