Exploration of the Value of Facially Expressive Avatars with VR Developers

Ayfer Gokalp and Jacqueline Pospisil are Facebook user experience researchers from Seattle, Washington, United States, and they focus on the development of software and hardware products within the virtual reality (VR) space. For this research, they explored the value of a facially expressive avatars for avatars in VR. Facially expressive avatars is a research prototype that allows users to reflect their real facial gestures on their virtual avatars in real‐time. For example, if you smile, your virtual avatar smiles as well. They conducted focus groups with VR developers about the potential value of facial expressiveness and found that expressing both positive emotions (e.g., happiness, excitement, and humor) and negative emotions (e.g., confusion, fear, disgust) are valuable for VR avatars. For instance, expressing fear or disgust facially while playing a zombie game would be more authentic and more immersive. In this gallery presentation you will have the opportunity to try an Oculus VR headset and demo an immersive experience. You will continue by creating your own avatar and edit how it looks. This demonstration will serve as an example of the current state of social VR experiences, and highlight how face‐mimicking can improve the users' virtual reality experiences by allowing them to express a wide variety of emotions and build agency within social VR experiences.