Improving Avatar-Video Layout and Interaction Design for Video Meeting Metaverses

Background Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for video meeting metaverse platforms such as Gather. Town, which support non-face-to-face communication using avatars and video screens, has increased rapidly. However, existing video meeting metaverses have a problem in visually mapping the avatar displayed on the screen to the corresponding video screen. Users find it difficult to communicate with others by moving the avatar in the metaverse space and synthesizing the avatar's motions and emoticons as well as other people’s facial expressions and hand gestures on the video screen. Methods Three experiments were conducted to derive an avatar-video layout and interaction design that can solve the mapping problem between avatar and video screen. Experiment I proposed various layout designs that facilitate avatar-video mapping, and compared ease of the mapping, visual complexity, and subjective satisfaction of each layout. In addition to the optimal layout derived from Experiment I, Experiment II verified the effect of the interaction that changes the position of the video according to the movement of the avatar. Experiment III investigated how to add effects such as opacity or size reduction to the video only when the avatar moves affect the user experience.