https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3728-218X
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Abstract
The advent of web-based interactive technologies has opened up new possibilities for virtual gatherings in 3D environments. Live-streaming, in particular, has gained increasing attention due to its effectiveness in engaging a large number of users in collective online activities. With an emphasis on audience participation, live-streaming shares common characteristics of the outlook of the metaverse and is driving new waves of interaction in virtual gatherings, such as engaging users through crowdsourcing control. However, this type of social interaction has not been examined in the Asian context, and it lacks systematic investigation of user experience with different crowdsourcing control methods. In this paper, we present a novel crowdsourcing control method based on DanMu, the subtitle system of Bilibili, one of the most successful and prevalent live-streaming platforms in Asia. We organized virtual gatherings by live-streaming a Minecraft virtual campus and examined the use of DanMu for crowdsourcing control. Our first study investigated the influence of three crowdsourcing control methods (First Come First Served, Vote, and Super Command) on collective navigation task efficiency and user experience. These influences were further discussed with user activeness and group sizes in a follow-up study. The results showed that Super Command, a representative mode on top of the democratic voting mechanism, offers better user experiences and social richness in large groups. Participants also rated its usability higher in small groups. Besides, virtual gathering in small groups allows greater pragmatic quality, usability, and a sense of agency than in large groups. Our work provides design guidelines for developers and HCI practitioners to develop crowdsourcing control methods and improve novel virtual gathering experiences in virtual worlds and the future metaverse.
Acknowledgements
We thank our participants for their time and the reviewers for their comments and suggestions that helped us improve our paper.
Data availability statement
Data associated with this research can be made available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Yue Li
Yue Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Her research interest is in the field of human-computer interaction, with particular emphasis on the design, evaluation, and application of virtual and augmented reality technologies in cultural heritage and education.
Teng Ma
Teng Ma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. His research interests focus on exploring the impact of technologies in information dissemination, social computing, and business analytics.
Ziming Li
Ziming Li is a first-year Ph.D. student at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. His research focuses on Virtual Reality (VR) and its applications, especially for collaborative and teleoperation tasks.
Hai-Ning Liang
Hai-Ning Liang is an Associate Professor in the Computation Media and Arts Thrust at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). His main research interests fall in the area of human-computer interaction, focusing on designing novel techniques and applications for virtual/augmented/mixed reality, visualization, and gaming technologies.