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Uses of Virtual Reality for Communication in
Financial Services: A Case study on comparing
different Telepresence interfaces : Virtual
Reality compared to Video Conferencing
Abraham G. Campbell1, Thomas Holz, Jonny Cosgrove2, Mike Harlick, and
Tadhg O’Sullivan2
1School of Computer Science , University College Dublin , Belfield, Dublin 4,Ireland
abey.campbell@ucd.ie / https://www.vrlabucd.com/
2MeetingRoom, info@meetingroom.io / https://www.meetingroom.io/
Abstract. This paper examines the use of Virtual Reality to conduct
meetings online and compares them with an approach using traditional
video teleconferencing software. The research was conducted using Vir-
tual Reality meeting software and Skype for Business as test environ-
ments to compare a Virtual Reality meeting versus a Video conferenc-
ing environment. The results point to the improved feelings of presence,
closeness, and arousal for Virtual Reality environments, but also demon-
strate a difference in the experience for female and male participants. In
particular, the use of Avatar’s instead of real-life video images of the par-
ticipants was preferred by female participants which point to a possible
de-biasing ability for Virtual Reality environments. The results also indi-
cate to a need to explore difference interfaces designs and discuss lessons
from the historical adoption of technology from the financial services
community. s
Index Terms - Virtual Reality ; Telepresence ; User Studies ; Confer-
ence Calls; Video Conferencing
1 INTRODUCTION
The research conducted for this paper was a comparison test between different
interfaces using Telepresence techniques. Two participants at a time met using
either Virtual Reality(VR) or Skype. Following that experience, the users met
again using the alternative method. Once they complete the experiment, they
surveyed about both experiences. To control for bias, just over half tried with the
conditions in opposite order. The participants were then surveyed using a media
experience survey along with a questionnaire asking them which they preferred.
They were asked their age (not specific, within a 5-year range), sex and a short
section allowing them to write any feedback about the experience. The research
hypothesis of this paper is that the VR experience will be more positive, make
2 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
the users feel more in control, be more present with the other user, and more
enjoyable than the video link up.
In summary, the principal contribution of the paper is exploring if existing
VR systems like the HTC VIVE can provide a means of communication similar
or better than standard video conferencing software that is now widely adopted.
The papers secondary contribution is its discussion on the potential future uses
of VR within Financial Services that emerged from discussions between the par-
ticipants, examination of the results of the experiment and background research
in this field conducted.
2 Background
This work brings together multiple disciplines to attempt to explore how VR
may facilitate communication between people in the future. It chiefly examines
the case for Financial Institutions which have been at the for the forefront of
innovation in this field since the introduction of home banking in the 1980’s.
One could argue that the first ATM attempted to allow for automatic Business-
to-Customer communication as far back as the 1960’s.
2.1 Virtual Reality
The notion of other worlds co-existing in parallel worlds to our own has been
a part of human culture for millennia. The notion of Heaven above and Hell
below is common to the Judaic, Christian and Islamic worlds. In Irish culture,
the concept of “The Sidhe” who exist in a parallel world to our own appears in
the faerie myths of Celtic tradition. The idea of existing in both the real world
and a fantasy (Other) world simultaneously is a relatively modern concept but
Virtual reality and Augmented Reality allows us to exist in these new worlds.
Ivan Sutherland’s concept of the “Ultimate Display” [1] crystallised the no-
tions of a computer-generated world, which eventually was named Virtual Real-
ity attributed by Howard Rheingold to Jaaron Lanier in his 1992 book “Virtual
Reality” [2]. This concept led in 1992 to the first truly immersive virtual envi-
ronment the C.A.V.E or CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment developed by
Cruz-Neira, DeFanti and Sandin [3]. The more inexpensive versions of the CAVE
have been developed [4] but it was not until the Oculus Rift Kickstarter that
genuinely immersive displays became affordable.
The term “Augmented Reality” also dates from 1992. Looking for new ways
to help maintain aircraft, Caudell and Mizell’s design of the HUDset [5], allows
a user to see virtual objects within their field of vision. VR and AR can be
seen to exist in a continuum. Milgram and Kishino who created a conceptual
framework [6] defined the terms Mixed Reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR)
and Augmented Virtuality (AV). See Figure 1 whereby environments that are
either purely physical or virtual form opposite extrema. Between these two end-
points lies the domain of Mixed Reality which itself is divided into the two
subcategories; Augmented Reality (AR) and Augmented Virtuality.
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 3
Fig. 1. The Reality-Virtuality Continuum [6]
The rise in Virtual Reality in the last few years has been staggering, with
over 70% of United Kingdom consumers saying they would buy a VR headset [7]
. During Virtual Reality World London 2017, it was agreed by multiple experts
that in general over 70% of the public have used some form of VR. Other studies
from 2016 suggest that in the USA , 58 % know about VR headsets . This
percentage was further validated from the questionnaire results of participants
during experiment conducted for this paper, where 56% had used some form
of VR. This follows a familiar trend of technology, were the telephone took
80 years to reach 100 million users while mobile phones achieved that in 15
years while app’s like Whatapp are achieving this goal within 3 years. Virtual
Reality environments for Education, Construction and Medicine have already
been demonstrated [8][9] [10] so financial services are logical new use case for
this technology.
Previous experience of any technology is essential for its adoption as a new
medium. This can be clearly observed with one previous attempt at home bank-
ing ”Videotex” which failed on a large scale in the USA. One contributing factor
for this failure was just simple adoption. Adoption is correlated strongly with
previous experience with a system [11]. Only in one country, France, where the
necessary factors aligned to cause large-scale adoption of ”Videotex”, aided in
part by significant government intervention. When compared to Virtual Reality,
Augmented Reality adoption has been spearheaded by AR games[12][13] like
Pokemon Go which has been the first real success in this market.
2.2 Innovation in Financial Services using Information technology
The use of immersive Virtual Reality for communications is just the next step
after mobile and home banking innovations that have taken place over the last
few decades. The effect of the introduction of Playstation VR makes VR become
a more common occurrence and thus creating a new social norm around VR.
The factors that lead to the adoption of Internet Banking [14] were related to
the confidence in technology related to cost, the security of the platform and
most importantly government support for electronic commerce. This aspect of
government support allows technology to indeed become a social norm which is
essential for its adoption.
Government support usually though only takes place long after significant
influencers within a society have adopted a technology. A theory of planned be-
4 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
havior [15] proposed by Icek Ajzen examines why people embrace technology. In
this theory, it is the combination of Attitude, Normality and perceived behav-
ioral control that feeds into the intention of an action resulting in a behavior
taking place. These ideas were further by Rogers [16] on how innovations are
spread and communicated to the world. The adoption of the ATM [17] which
took time to get customer acceptance, ultimately succeed with the introduction
of a pin card [18], the technology finally began large-scale adoption from the
general public. Other technologies interestingly enough failed initially such as
home banking [19] [11] but customers eventually flocked in the 2000’s to this
technology once exposed to using the internet in general.
Mobile banking must be a reference point for any future communication
tool, as most telephone banking and financial services offer the majority of their
customer services through the phone. Karduck et al. [20] describes how effec-
tive this new form of multimedia technology is to banking. The world is now
a global village using multimedia communication to connect far-flung regions ”
International banks in particular face the major challenge of achieving the right
balance” between global and local. Fundamentally financial institutions need to
know if the customer is willing to use this paradigm. Initial customers can be
suspicious of new systems, and the banking community is also skeptical. Only
the possibility of significant savings for a bank will help it to overcome this is-
sue. The ease of use of a system plays a critical role as customers may have an
issue with the lack of direct human interaction [21]. ATM’s only work because a
bank does not need to train its customers for 2 hours how to use them [22]. Any
communication tool must be intuitive to the user, so no training is required.
A separate but equally important issue is to support the elderly who may
not be used to the current generation of technology, this is reduced in Europe
and America but still present in developing world which is only at the beginning
of ATM adoption. Adoption is happening [23] but crucially ATM’s have been
skipped over as most banking transactions take place using mobile phones [24].
Immersive VR offers the ability to remove the cost of a location similarly to
Internet banking but still allow for a more natural interaction that customers
want. The latest example of this is from First Gulf Bank who launched their VR
app in November 2016 in the Mall of the Emirates, Dubai.
2.3 Questionnaire used within this paper experiment
The basis of the questionnaires used within this comes from Wissmath et al [25]
who have been exploring more efficient surveys for Virtual Reality experiences.
” Whenever someone does not want to measure presence ex-post, but online
(during exposure), the presence SAM is clearly to be preferred over a verbal
presence questionnaire with plenty of items: It is not feasible that a participant
in a Virtual Environment(VE) has to respond to a verbal 20-item questionnaire
without being pulled out of the immersive experience. In contrast, Wissmath
et al. (2010) could show that using the presence SAM makes it possible to test
presence during media exposure or within an ongoing task. This again allows
assessing temporal variations in the subjective sense of presence.” quote from
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 5
[26] This experiment used [27] and [25], with the novel inclusion of a close-
ness Manikin as the experiment was fundamentally about subjects interacting
rather than just mere presence in the environment. Presence examination of me-
diated experience[28] of being there can be summed up as follows: ” The sense
of presence, i.e., being in the VE is in the center of psychological study of a
human experience in VE. The Big three structure of physical presence consists
of perceptual, attentional and cognitive components. However, it is considered
to ignore, e.g., emotional and ecological aspects in developing a holistic human
experience. ” quote from [29] multiple ways of examining presence, so that why
we added closeness
The current questionnaire is a variant of Bradley et al Manikin’s [27]assess-
ment as it’s simple for large-scale experiences and subjects can be distracted
in non-laboratory environment, fatigued especially in AB tests where the form
needs to be filled in twice. This leads on to our final subsection to discuss other
previous attempts at using VR for on-line meetings.
2.4 Use of VR for on-line meetings
The VR meeting software is not the first tool ever developed for an online meeting
in VR. The most famous online meeting software has been Second Life which was
famously used by IBM [30] internally for a number of years. The collaboration
attempted solely using desktop VR but proved not successful overall. A number
of employees did like the idea, but it did not get the mass adoption required. One
of the crucial elements missing was immersion both in terms of sound and vision.
IBM took the approach of communicating in the third person, which contributed
to a lack of focus in any meeting in VR as the avatar was interacting with other
participants and not the user. Further information about this can be found in The
Corporate Perspective: Commercial and Business Opportunities and Problems
of Virtual World (David McNeill and Matthew Ganis, IBM Corporation [31]
IBM. There were some arguments put forward that even in this limited form
that VR did succeed, ” accepted in a serious for-profit science and engineering
organisation through a process we refer to as convergent recognition” [32]. It
is the conflicting accounts of the experiment that needs to be teased out in
the future, and this paper is an attempt to start addressing if VR meetings
with current immersive technology can finally take their place as a tool for
communication for large-scale companies.
3 Experiment
The research will be a simple AB test comparing different interface for using
Telepresence techniques. Two participants will be meeting using either VR or
Skype, and then they will be surveyed on their experience. Following that expe-
rience, the users will then try to meet again using the alternative method and be
surveyed again. The participants will be using a media experience survey along
with a questionnaire asking them which they preferred. They will then be asked
6 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
their age (not specific, within a 5-year range), sex and a short section allowing
them to write any feedback about the experience. The research hypothesis is that
the VR experience will make the users feel more in control, be more present with
the other user, and more enjoyable than the video link up. The survey results
were only available to the researchers, and only the final results were shared with
BOI.
3.1 Experimental Methods
The qualitative research took place in the Bank of Ireland Workbench in Grand
Canal Square and was open to all members of the general public who visited
the space over the period that the study was conducted. The participants were
recruited voluntarily, and participants were informed beforehand about the ex-
periment and asked would like to take part. The two primary interfaces to be
explored are Voice/video over IP (using Skype for Business) and Virtual Reality
using a commercially available Virtual Reality headset VIVE to conduct an im-
mersive VR experience via VR meeting software. The results of this recruitment
lead to 100 participants.
3.2 Experimental Design
The experiment was designed so that over half were put in VR meeting first
and then a Video conference call, while the other participants tried the Video
call first and then the VR approach. The first VR desktop setup can be seen in
/reffig:FirstArea while the second setup can be seen in /reffig:SecondArea.
Fig. 2. Screen shot of the Virtual Room used for the experiment
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 7
Fig. 3. Photo of the First setup within the Bank
Fig. 4. Photo of the Second setup within the Bank
3.3 Software Setup
The Virtual room used can be seen in figure 2 . Several versions of the room
were tried and to make sure that people did not feel enclosed in the room outside
windows were inserted. One was a forest version that can be seen in the figure
5.
Fig. 5. Screen shot of the external view given to participants in the experiment
The external views dropped the frame rate but it was still above the 80
frames a second need when running in the high-end desktop but this external
view did run counter to a traditional design philosophy of using a low Polygon
environment ( under 100,000 vertexes). One compromise is to use a shader to the
generated external scenes like a sea which can be seen in Figure 6 Both the voice
information and movement were transmitted to each environment through the
Photon Cloud platform. Traditionally this cloud platform was used for gaming
rather than enterprise environments, but ironically the requirements for gaming
8 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
networks regarding security and reliability have now acceded to that of many
existing enterprise platforms. The advantage of using a cloud-based approach to
network the environments is that of scalability and allows the support of 1,000’s
of users with ease. Security wise the Photon cloud supports 160 bit key AES
encryption which meets and surpasses most financial services standards, though
some are still based on DES3 which although better than DES [33] is not as
strong as AES [34].
Fig. 6. Screen shot of the external view given to participants in the experiment
3.4 Physical Setup
The physical setup for the experiment required two Desktop PCs and two lap-
tops. The PC was configured for VR, and each contained an Intel Core i7 6700K,
a GeForce GTX 1070 and 32 GB DDR4 of memory. The laptops had 13-inch
displays and were using Intel Core M 5Y10 processors with 4 GB of memory
with integrated graphics cards. The laptop was only used for the Skype com-
ponents and were both higher than the recommended specifications. The two
desktop platforms were paired up with 2 X HTC VIVE as the VR HMD’s for
the experiment. As the bank is L shaped, both setups could be position at the
far end of the bank at a distance of 15 meters apart and with no line of site
achievable. Thus at any given point the participants could not see or hear the
other participants.
3.5 Protocol
The experiment used a manikin questionnaire based on [25] which allowed partic-
ipants to report their experience within a short time frame, in general, most par-
ticipants had returned the questionnaire within 10 minutes. Comparable ques-
tionnaires such as Slater and Steed [35] can take up to 15 minutes per experiences
(so 30 minutes if used for this experiment) and in the non-laboratory conditions
of conducting research in an operational bank, this would prove to be impossible
to get the number of participants that this experiment achieved.
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 9
3.6 Results
The experiment had 100 participants which allowed for a large scale statistical
analysis of the results and potential sub-populations which will be conducted in
a follow on paper which will submitted for peer review.
The breakdown includes male and female which in most cases have no signif-
icant difference, an exception to this result is in the female positive response to
the VR meeting, in comparison male participants far above that of the male par-
ticipants. This difference will be discussed further in the discussion section. As
this major difference was observed it is thus important that results are given for
both populations. In general these results back up previous research that demon-
strates that Immersive VR virtually eliminates any sex difference in terms of
experiments. This is consistent with Czerwinski et al work, which demonstrated
that women perform equally to men in data input and potentially general use
of Computer as a whole [36] when they use a display with a large field of view.
Without a large field of view, women in generally take 25% longer to perform a
task. In all the T-test performed it was assumed that the Hypothesized Mean
Difference was zero. Due to incomplete surveys a total of 84 valid sub jects were
used for the final reported results. The initial results were test against 98 and
reported the same results. This higher level of scrutiny allows both the reader
and authors to have greater certain that the claims made in these results are
accurate and provide an authoritative source for future VR development.
Fig. 7. These box plots illustrate a comparison of Valence, Arousal, Dominance, Pres-
ence and Closeness reported by the participants
Presence Presence was highest for male participants interacting over VR (MM
VR = 7.83 ), followed by female participants interacting over VR(MF VR =7.80
), female participants interacting over Video (MF Vid = 5.84 )and male partici-
pants interacting over video (MM Vid = 5.46 ). A mixed-design ANOVA found a
significant main effect of CONDITION on presence (F(1; 84) = 58.40, p = 3.13
e-11, N2G=0.25 ) with participants of both genders feeling significantly more
10 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
present in the VR interaction than in the Video interaction. No main effect of
SEX on presence (F(1; 84) = 0:29 , p = 0.58 , N2G=0:001) or interaction effect
(F(1; 84) = 0.40 , p =0.52 , N2G= 0.002 ) was found.
The results above demonstrate that out of the 84 valid observations, par-
ticipants felt that the VR immersive meeting was far more immersive than the
video call as can be seen in Figure 7.
–With such a low P value ( Negative Exponent is to the power of negative 11),
this is the first clear result of the experiment that demonstrates the ability
of VR head-mounted displays to truly immerse the participant in a Virtual
World compared with a traditional video call.
–When male participants are segmented out, the immersion is still strong and
with this P value, the experiment would have to be run over a million times
to see this result if it was by chance alone.
–The female breakdown is not as strong as the overall or male breakdown but
it still clearly demonstrates that the use of Virtual reality technology does
indeed create an immersive experience of the user.
–This experience of presence allowed the participants to be more focused and
shut out any external distractions.
–In one case during the experiment, one set of participants need to be briefly
stopped as they were discussing personal issues within their workplaces due
to the fact they were so immersed that they did not remember that they
were in bank with multiple members of staff and several members of the
general public around them within earshot.
Valence As Valence is not a common used term it can defined in psychology as
the intrinsic attractiveness of an experience. According to the ANOVA, Valence
was highest for female participants interacting over VR(MF VR = 3.19), followed
by male participants interacting over video (MM Vid = 3.16), male participants
interacting over VR (MM VR = 2.9) and female participants interacting over
Video (MF Vid = 2.23 ). The ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect
(F(1; 84) = 5.01 , p = 0.027, N2G= 0.025) but no main effect of SEX (F(1; 84)
= 1.04 , p = 0.30, N2G = 0.007) or CONDITION (F(1; 84) = 0.17, p = 0.67,
N2G=0.0008). Post-hoc t-test showed that female participants perceived the
VR interaction as significantly more pleasant than the Video interaction (t(25)
= 2.48, p = 0.019), and that female participants perceived the Video interaction
as significantly more unpleasant than male participants (t(75.32) =-3.00, p =
0.0036 ). No significant differences were found when comparing reactions of male
participants to VR and Video (t(59) =-0.83, p = 0.40) or reactions to interactions
via VR of female and male participants (t(56.21) = 0.69 , p = 0.49 ).
–This result is , and there is a discrepancy between this result and when the
overall population was directly asked to compare the two conditions.
–The reason for this discrepancy will be discussed further in the discussion
section.
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 11
–Overall the Males were slightly negative and would have chosen the VC
meeting instead of the VR meeting.
–This did not entirely match up with the self-reported comparison were when
directly asked if they would choose a VR meeting or a VC meeting, the male
participants said they would choose a VR meeting.
–The reason for this discrepancy will be discussed further in the discussion
section.
–In particular Female participants mentioned how the other participants could
not see them and it allowed them to focus on the meeting rather than how
they were judged physically.
–These difference between male and female participants only showed up in
the Valence test, suggesting a significant difference in the experience as can
be seen in the diagram 8 , where Valency is the only outlier.
Control Similar to Valance, dominance was highest for male participants inter-
acting over video (MM Vid = 6.8), followed by female participants interacting
over Video (MF Vid = 6.23076923076923), male participants interacting over
VR (MM VR = 6.13333333333333) and female participants interacting over
VR(MF VR = 5.80769230769231). However, a mixed-design ANOVA for domi-
nance found no significant main effect of SEX (F(1; 84) = 1.59, p = 0.21, N2G
=0.009 ) or CONDITION (F(1; 84) = 3.30 , p =0.07 , N2G= 0.019 ) nor an
interaction effect (F(1; 84) =0.11 , p = 0.73 , N2G= 0.0007).
–From these results although not significant it does appear that people prefer
the system that they know better.
–That being said, in both conditions participants felt highly in control.
–Both results are very high so participants did feel in control but video confer-
ence did appear to be more popular. As the P-value results make it impossible
to argue between the two conditions.
–Females participants reported they felt less in control in the VR meeting
room as they were unfamiliar with the interface more than male participants.
Again with such a high p-value, little can be discerned from this result.
–Future experiments will require that a set interface for the VR condition
is given to the users beforehand and perhaps this would generate a more
precise result.
Arousal Arousal was highest for female participants interacting over VR(MF
VR = 6.03), followed by male participants interacting over VR (MM VR =
5.68), female participants interacting over Video (MF Vid = 3.69) and male
participants interacting over video (MM Vid = 3:51). A mixed-design ANOVA
for Arousal found a main effect of CONDITION (F(1; 84) = 53.80, p = 1.27
e-10, N2G= 0.16), with participants of both genders feeling significantly more
excited when interacting via VR than via Video. No significant main effect of
SEX (F(1; 84) = 0.30, p = 0.58, N2G= 0.0024) or interaction effect of SEX and
CONDITION (F(1; 84) = 0.074, p = 0.78, N2G= 0.00027) was found.
12 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
–The results indicate that participants felt far more excitement and thus
engagement within the Virtual Reality meeting than that of the Video Con-
ference meeting.
–As with the overall population, male participants felt the VR meeting had
a sense of engagement that was lacking in the Video meeting.
–The reported excitement level was most significant in the female participants
even though several reported that when seeing the female avatars that they
were not sufficiently feminine.
–The excitement level for VR was similar to the male participants but is far
higher due to the shallow level of excitement generated by the video meeting.
–This result was highly significant. Even with such as success, it must be
noted that the novelty effect will play a factor here. This is counterbalanced
with the fact that over 50% of the participants had used Virtual Reality
before this experience.
Closeness Closeness was an additional Manikin developed for this paper since
a second participant would be present in the VR world, so it was logical to eval-
uate this additional factor. The Manikin was designed to ask the user if they felt
physically closer to other users in both environments. It was highest for male
participants interacting over VR (MM VR =6.61), followed by female partici-
pants interacting over VR(MF VR =6.57), female participants interacting over
Video (MF Vid = 4.80) and male participants interacting over video (MM Vid =
4.66). A mixed-design ANOVA found a significant main effect of CONDITION
on closeness, with participants of both genders feeling significantly closer in the
VR than the Video interaction (F(1; 84) = 26.93, p = 1.43 e-06, N2G= 0.17).
No main effect of SEX on closeness (F(1; 84) =0.03 , p = 0.86 , N2G= 0:0001)
nor interaction effect (F(1; 84) = 0.05 , p = 0.82 ,N2G= 0.0003) was observed.
–Overall the participants felt physically closer to each other when using the
Virtual Reality meeting software than video conference software.
–This allows for a far more focused meeting as participants cannot ignore the
users in front of them.
–Male and Female feelings of closeness matches with the overall population
and demonstrates along with Arousal, that a Virtual Reality meeting is far
more engaging and with the added Closeness factor can be a much more
focused meeting as well.
4 Discussion
First, the discussion will highlight the original hypotheses for the experiment
and examine if they were upheld and the null hypothesis can be rejected.
– Hypothesis: Virtual Reality will be a more positive Experience
1. Partial upheld but only in Female participants
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 13
2. There was a major difference between the sexes in their experience of the
VR meetings when compared with Videoconference. The null hypothesis
cannot be rejected for Male participants. For female participants, the
effect of having a virtual meeting space appears to be a major area that
needs further research.
– Hypothesis: The participants will feel more in control of the ap-
plication in Virtual reality
1. The null hypothesis cannot be rejected and thus very little can be said.
2. While both conditions scored very highly, neither could be said to have
been better than the each other. Further research would be needed, but
in general, the people are always going to be more positive about in-
terfaces they are more familiar with. Even though VR creates a natural
interaction between the users, people are more familiar with Video con-
ferencing even if in VR they use natural interactions that they use in
everyday life.
– Hypothesis: Participants will feel more Immersed in the VR meet-
ing
1. Upheld in its entirety and the null hypothesis can be rejected
2. Upheld Feeling immersed within the VR software than using a traditional
approach using Skype for Business
– Hypothesis: Participants will feel closer to each other in a VR
meeting
1. Upheld so the null hypothesis can be rejected
2. The participants felt physically closer to the other participant and thus
could conduct a more focused meeting even resulting in participants
forgetting that other people were around them leading to the experiment
having to be paused to remind them they were standing in a bank talking.
This adds credence to the claim that VR will allow for more focused
meetings in the future.
– Hypothesis: Participants will find the Virtual Reality meeting more
Exciting than the Video Conference
1. Exciting yes but not necessarily positive experience. An interesting dif-
ference though for female and male participants
The majority choose the VR Meeting room above the, but when examining
their questionnaire results, we find an interesting paradox, they rate the Video
Conference above the VR Meeting room. This paradox, the authors believe is
due to the effect of the bulkiness of the current VR headsets. Anecdotally, par-
ticipants stated that the headsets were bulky or that they felt the wire could get
tangled.
5 Future Possibilities
Reflecting on the results of the experiments has to lead the researchers involved
to imagine a number of potential opportunities. Using the VR environment
without an HMD, using technology previously developed by University College
14 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
Fig. 8. These box plots demonstrate how with the exception of Valency, the partici-
pants sex did not effect any of the results
Dublin [4], a VR room in could be constructed similar to the traditional CAVE
environment but just with one screen. This technology could use the VIVE
tracker or Kinect to track the head position of the user and create a similar VR
meeting to what was evaluated in this report. Using an Agent-Oriented approach
to develop Avatars that behave realistically [37] could allow the avatars within a
session to react more naturally to the user. The agents could also be used facil-
itating ubiquitous interaction [38]. Finally, the Virtual Reality approach taken
during this experiment could be extended to Augmented Reality [39] by using
new technologies such as the Apple ARkit.
6 CONCLUSIONS
6.1 Learn from the Technology Learning Curve
Virtual Reality must not repeat the mistakes of Home Banking of the 1980’s,
and it must make sure that its interface is intuitive. Fundamentally, it must
not make the same mistakes of ATM’s in the 60’s but learn and adopt the
tactics that made online banking so successful in the 2000’s. This experiment
indicates the potential of VR for allowing customers and bank employees to
meet remotely. These meeting will have better engagement and focus if the
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 15
results of this experiment can be replicated in the VR meeting software used.
The hypothesis that participants would have more positive feelings to VR when
compared to video communications (VC) meeting was only partially upheld and
only in the case for female participants.
One very telling post interview exchange demonstrated this clearly to the
researcher. For context, all post interviews were done separately, so the partici-
pants did not know what other had said as their participation was anonymous.
A female participant reported that she felt that the other Avatar was not able
to intimidate her as would have been possible in a video call. A separate male
participant reported that he disliked the Virtual Reality world as he felt was
not able to intimidate the other participant which he was able to do using a
video conference. The experiment limited movement of the avatar so they could
not invade each other personal spaces. Further research could be conducted as it
may be that due to the experimental setup, the Virtual reality case study ben-
efited artificially by its separation of the avatars. The positions of the avatars
only allowed them to reach over and virtually shake each other’s hands. Female
participants also remarked that they felt the Virtual Reality meeting allowed
them not to be judged by their appearance, this also led to request that the
female avatar have a more feminine appearance. This appears due to deeper un-
derlying social issues where female participants felt judged on their appearance
(reported in feedback) and suggest that VR may have a use to de-bias interviews
and meetings in the future. VR meeting may in fact become a legal requirement
to help promote gender equality. Virtual Reality is not a panacea to this issue
but could be a possible tool to aid society transformation into a truly equal
world. Future research should also examine if this technique could reduce racial
discrimination as well.
6.2 Considering Hardware, Bandwidth and Diversity
The results do back up previous research that demonstrates that Immersive VR
virtually eliminates any gender difference. The prior analysis showed that women
perform equally to men in data input and potentially general use of computers as
a whole when they use a display with a large field of view [Czerwinski et al., 2002].
Without a large field of view, women in the experiment conducted by Microsoft
took approximately 25% longer to perform tasks during the investigation. This
highlights an improved feeling within females of control of communications via
the use of avatars in comparison to VC. Older participants (50+) showed a
preference for the use case over VC, but further research is needed to produce
concrete insights. Enterprises who want to level the playing field need to use
further the virtual and augmented reality medium as an additional means to
address the gender gap.
Overall the participant’s meetings in both VR and using VC demonstrated
that teleconference technologies have matured to the point that communica-
tion remotely when given a dedicated connection, is entirely achievable. Many
participants in post interviews stated how video teleconference frequently suffer
problems with connectivity, and this usually is due not to the creators of VC
16 Abraham G. Campbell et al.
software but the underlying infrastructure. This is an ongoing problem where
users do not have the dedicated upload and download speeds required to con-
duct a call of decent quality. VR can alleviate some of these issues due to the
lower bandwidth requirements of merely sending transforms for the VR avatar
location and limbs. This reduction is on average 1/10 the requirements of send-
ing Video. This, alongside the potential for de-biasing and leveling effect of VR,
coupled with the ratings from older demographics, equates to massive potential
concerning diversity in the HR process and adoption in the financial services
industry.
The use of HTC VIVE in the experiment highlighted the issue of how VR
achieves the immersive VR environment. The HTC lighthouse system does not
require a camera to track the user in space as it receives its tracking information
from a sweeping laser that acts similar to how a traditional lighthouse would
have been used by a ship in the sea. Other tracking technologies like the Oculus
Constellation system or PlayStation VR do use a camera to detect infrared
emitters in the scene to track the user. This camera can be potentially hacked
and thus allow for the recording of the user as the infra emitters emission are
very close to visible light. Creating a camera that sees infrared and no visible
light is a difficult and expensive task, but for that technology approach to VR
to be used in a commercial bank then changes must be made. Similarly, the
onboard camera on the VIVE would need to be blocked.
6.3 Sound Matters for Engagement and Decision Making
The final aspect of using VR meeting software instead of VC is the spatial
sound inherit with the move to Virtual Reality. During our post interviews with
each of the participants, many mentioned the fact that on calls with more than
two people that the conversions would naturally become more difficult as each
participant needed to wait for others to stop talking. This waiting for a moment
of silence was required to enter into the conversation, and the timing of when
to speak got even more complicated as more people joined the call. In a Virtual
world just like in real life, sound comes from the direction of the participant
talking thus this waiting was not required. This is not to suggest that people talk
over each other but that a participant could discern which speaker was speaking
along with making out what was said as the audio came from a different spatial
direction. Along with more natural body language cues such as simply raising
your hand, this above all else points to a new use of Virtual Reality to conduct
teleconference calls in the future. The value provided to the decision-making
process with knowledge management in an organization is exponentially linked
with the real world conversation highlighted above.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Airfibre for providing a dedicated 20 mbit line which
allowed the Video Conferencing software control to run at 1080P. Antonio Tallon
Virtual Reality compared to Video Conferencing 17
and HTC for technical support and advice during the experiment. The experi-
ment was supported by Bank of Ireland, MeetingRoom.io and Wooq Ventures
and it would not have been possible without their support.
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