Falling Asleep Together: What Makes Activities in Social Virtual Reality Meaningful to Users

Abstract

The increasingly popular social virtual reality (VR) is dramatically transforming how people meet, interact, and socialize online. These immersive digital spaces blend aspects of the online and offline worlds, creating new opportunities for online interactivity. Yet, questions still remain about what individuals actually do in social VR and how they envision and reflect on the design of social VR technologies. In this paper, we report our findings of an interview study (N=30)that investigated what made activities on these platforms meaningful to users as well as users' recommendations for designing social VR to better support such activities. Our findings expand current literature on social dynamics and sociality in online digital spaces by focusing on social VR. We also inform future design directions to create more socially supportive and satisfying social VR space.