New people want to be hosted in Social VR
Hosts are essential knowing what to do and where to go
Social Virtual Reality platforms are working to generate engaging experiences that draw people in and motivate them to return. It led me to wonder — what are the core elements what make humans feeling comfortable and stimulated and turns them into repeat visitors? To answer that question, I gave demos of social VR platforms to nine experts of spatial & social experience design and then asked them for their impressions. Read the study’s introduction here. You can also read part 2 on Owning the Narrative, part 3 on Who is this Space for? part 4 Place Creates the Rules of Behavior, and part 5 Context is Comforting.
People have expectations about what makes an experiencing welcoming in the physical world. At an amusement park, they expect huge signage that lets them know what their destination is, even from far, far away. Participants in this study expected the same type of signals from virtual worlds like they did in the physical world, which could range from signage with instructions to actually being hosted by a human or an A.I. Five out of nine participants asked to be hosted and here is a deeper dive into their requests.
Hosts can set context that is essential for users to feel welcome in a new space. This was how one restaurateur described a good host.
If you had friends come over, you would become the host and you are working to introduce other people to your home. When people come to the restaurant, even if they are regulars, we give the same spiel about how our menu works, even though three-fourths of people may have been there and know it. It’s not their job to tell that fourth person how to order. They should be guided through the experience and that’s where the host comes in to play.
The participants in this study craved some sort of anchor to give them validation that they were supposed to be there.
If someone is building out a world, why isn’t there a concierge? Why don’t they have a hired person to be like, ‘Hi, welcome to my art gallery.’ A.I.s would be acceptable. It’s more the knowledge that someone is there who is supposed to be there, and who is intentionally paired with the space I’m entering.
Having hosts is part of the narrative of any social VR experience. The restaurateurs were especially chagrined by the lack of hosts in some of the worlds that they visited. A huge aspect of good hospitality is making a guest feel comfortable and capable.
You don’t even need real people to be hosts. You can just have a robot being like “Welcome to Japantown, here are all the things you can do. Some people like to hang out in this square. You can meet people here, or I can take you on a tour. Would you like to stop and get some sushi? Would you like to go swim in the ocean?”
It was less important to know exactly what the options were. It was just about having someone or something there to list out your options for you. That same person continued:
Being hosted would have changed the experience. I got plopped down and didn’t know what to do. I’ll walk here, and then some weird person is going to come talk to me so I’ll walk over here.
The lack of a host negatively impacted that person’s experience because she was skeptical of the other people who were wandering around that world. There was a desire to have credible sources of information.
There were instructions to go to the bar and order a drink– but there was no bartender. Even having a fake bartender there would be better. It’s like going to a party with no staff.
The retailer with a Masters degree in merchandising visited shops in social VR and she immediately noted the lack of staff:
I thought it was weird there weren’t any salespeople. An AI would be fine. You walk in, maybe a screen would open up — and like a real salesperson ask, “Are you looking for anything particular today? Can I help you find something?” You could type in… “I’m looking for hats” and then you could teleport over there… It’s weird to walk into a store and no one is there. You’re like, “Is this a fire drill?”
She pointed out that in the real world, theft is a concern for retailers and the presence of people and the layout of stores is designed to deter it. She understood that stealing wouldn’t be the same in VR, but it didn’t change her expectations that she would have someone else there while she shopped. The retailer reiterated that having an AI salesperson would be acceptable:
And people love messing with Siri. People could have a ball going in there and messing with the weird AI salesperson.”
Finally, here are a couple quotes from a restauranteur when she encountered a world that was staffed with real human greeters. It was very popular with the participant. When describing the greeter afterward, she said:
“He was very nice and casual; I could tell I was talking to a real person.
However, the restauranteur had two comments on her experience. First of all, it bothered her that the greeter could not make eye contact with her:
When he was right in front of me, he never looked at me. That’s the most engaging thing to do to somebody.
This person trains her staff of hundreds of people to make eye contact with all of the guests that they serve. She didn’t understand that was a limitation of VR technology and it unfortunately impacted her experience. This person suggested re-naming the role of “greeter” to “host” because she actually felt a lot of warmth for that person and host indicates a stronger potential for connection.
As you can see, these participants had fairly high expectations of technology in making useful A.I.s that would facilitating their experiences. They wanted hosts to lay out their options, be a credible source, and interact and make the experience more fun. For the one research participant who discovered a human greeter, she genuinely appreciated his time and attention.
If you are reading this and you have ideas on how social VR worlds could quickly implement hosting tools that rely on A.I., let me know. Or, have you found other experiences in VR that execute on this idea already? Find me on Twitter at @theextendedmind.
