SPASS

SPASS (Shared Personal Augmentations for Scalable Social Presence in Mixed Reality), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, is a research project in collaboration between Prof. Dr. Carolin Wienrich and Dr.-Ing. Wilko Heuten of the OFFIS Institute for Information Technology.

People are increasingly turning to digital communication tools to bridge the physical and social distance between friends, family and colleagues. Mixed reality (MR) applications in particular appear to be beneficial, as they can create a stronger sense of social presence.

However, it remains unclear which virtual and social elements of MR hinder or promote social presence. This is where SPASS comes in. The project aims to investigate how shared personal augmentation influences social presence in MR and communication over distance. Shared personal augmentation can take various forms, ranging from sharing personal objects to sharing one’s own space.  These personal augmentations can be shared with an interaction partner either by virtually transferring them into the partner’s physical space or by sharing them within one’s own space. Furthermore, social interactions in MR with friends may give rise to different social presence needs than those experienced with colleagues.

Shared personal augmentation therefore aims to make social presence scalable. Social presence is also a key factor in successful mediated communication. Nevertheless, there is currently a lack of validated measurement tools for assessing social presence in MR.

To systematically investigate social presence in MR, SPASS aims to develop a theoretical framework for modelling and predicting social presence, as well as a multimodal test battery combining self-assessments, physiological measures, behavioural observations and measures of referential cues. Furthermore, the project examines the impact of different shared personal augmentations on social presence and reciprocal usage behaviour.