Investigating Avatar Facial Expressions and Collaboration Dynamics for Social Presence in Avatar-Mediated XR Remote Communication

In avatar-mediated remote communication, reflecting one's facial expressions in avatars remains challenging but essential in facilitating effective communication and fostering social presence. From our prior studies, we underscored the significance of emotion-based facial expressions in avatar-mediated remote communications within eXtended Reality (XR). Our findings indicated that during emotional conversations as well as informative speeches, activating the emotion-based blendshapes resulted in a level of social presence and communication quality comparable to activating all facial blend-shapes. As we move forward, our research aims to investigate avatar facial expression considering XR contexts, with an emphasis on the challenges stemming from XR device constraints and the dynamic contexts of remote collaboration. We aspire to devise adaptive guidelines for avatar facial expression, leveraging emotional cues using XR devices. Additionally, we plan to systematically analyze the implications of remote collaboration's varying scenarios, formulating guidelines for adaptive avatar representation that account for different collaborative environments and scenarios. To enhance social presence and communication experiences among users, we are preparing for a series of user studies, aiming to validate the effectiveness of our approaches and prototype systems.