“What a Mess!”: Traces of Use to Increase Asynchronous Social Presence in Shared Virtual Environments

Abstract

Shared virtual environments (VEs) are challenged conveying and triggering users' feelings of social presence. Traces of use are implicit evidence of prior interactions that support social awareness in the real environment (RE). However, they have not been explored in VEs so far. We investigate the traces' effect on users' perception of asynchronous social presences in a within-subject study ($\mathrm{N}=26$) by comparing the users' experience with and without traces. The traces significantly increased the feeling of social presence. We contribute an initial exploration of the traces of use concept in VE to design shared social spaces for long-term use.