Heather (Hyerin) Im

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Virfie: Enhancing Remote Togetherness with User-Created Scenarios for Virtual Group Selfie



“What if the spaces between us (the silences, delays, and physical distances) weren’t barriers to overcome, but openings for new ways of sensing, feeling, and being together apart?”

To explore design opportunities within this frame, we conducted a participatory design study aimed at creating a novel virtual group selfie platform. Through this process, we identified three key characteristics of meaningful virtual group selfie scenarios: narrative-rich contexts, interactive group tasks, and the capturing of subtle, in-between moments.

These insights led to the development of Virfie, a web-based platform that enables users to take group selfies while engaging in embodied social interactions, and to co-create custom selfie experiences using a new JSON-based scenario specification.

To evaluate the platform and uncover usability issues, we conducted a user study, which revealed how remote selfies can become tools for intimacy, co-presence, and playful reimaginings of shared memory-making, even across distance.



Author
Heather Hyerin Im 
Taewan Kim
Eunhee Jung
Bonhee Ku
Seungho Baek 
Takyeon Lee

Published  
‣ Intellisys 2024: Im, H. et al. (2024). Virfie: Enhancing Remote Togetherness with User-Created Scenarios for Virtual Group Selfie. In: Arai, K. (eds) Intelligent Systems and Applications. IntelliSys 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 1068. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66336-9_44

‣ CHI 2022: Hyerin Im, Taewan Kim, Eunhee Jung, Bonhee Ku, Seungho Baek, and Tak Yeon Lee. 2022. Virfie: Virtual Group Selfie Station for Remote Togetherness. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 382, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519767














Introduction / Background

“We are moving away from photography as a way of recording and storing the past, and instead of turning photography into a social medium in its own right.” - Kelsey, 08
Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson. 2008. The meaning of photography. Clark Art Institute. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing systems are used as a tool for group selfies. However, conventional systems are not ideal for group selfies

  • Limitation 1. The Grid Views
  • Limitation 2. Video Fatigue
  • Limitation 3. Information Overload






Participatory Design



To explore design opportunities and needs for a novel virtual group selfie platform, we conducted a participatory design. Participants proposed sketches of various virtual group selfie ideas

Total participants: 12, AV: 25.3 y/o (SD = 2.02)



Three Characteristics of Virtual Group Selfie Scenarios 



  • Interactive group tasks: What if “Cheers” effect being triggered when all the beer glasses hold by users’ hands collide with each other? - P4

  • Capturing Subtle Moments: Split each member’s face into three pieces, and continuously create new faces by randomly combining the pieces! - P12
  • Context with Narratives: It would be fun to take a virtual trip with a friend who could not travel together! - P5





Virfie System


We implemented Virfie, a web-based platform that enables users to take group selfies with embodied social interaction, and to create and customize selfie scenarios using a novel JSON specification.  








User Test


After implementing Virfie, in order to validate our design concept and identify usability issues we conducted a user study.

To simulate the feeling of physical remoteness, we separated the participants into different rooms. We allowed participants to freely take group selfies using the laptops we provided.


UT Results



User Test Results We implemented three ideas chosen from the participatory design session. We shared the link url and collected 480 virtual group selfie photos, video data of individual participants.


  • Space Wiggle promotes social interaction through a group gesture-based task. Participants gather on-screen, triggering a vortex effect that simulates falling into a black hole, enhancing the group selfie experience with a cosmic background.
  • Emotion tracker focuses on capturing participants without showing instant emotions. Instead, weather icons representing various emotions appear on users' faces every three seconds, adding a metaphorical layer to interaction.
  • Club virfie, enriches virtual narratives with context across three scenes: Club Entrance, Club Bar, and Dance Hall. At the Club Entrance, gathering participants trigger a polaroid photo capture. The flexible screen range for this interaction fosters communication as participants discuss and choose locations.




Findings


1. Beyond the grid of video conferencing
  • Alleviating Gaze Misalignment: By viewing all members together, participants felt more present in a shared virtual space, moving away from the isolation of individual boxes.
  • Enhancing Remote Togetherness: The illusion of sharing the same physical space improved participants' sense of unity. One participant noted that this spatial consistency and shared activities fostered greater intimacy.

2. Virtual Environment as an Instrument for Creative Expression
  • Virtual environment fostered creative expression. Participants actively engaged with the novelty of the space, with one even expressing a desire to interact with a graphical element in the background.

3. Remembering Dynamics of Emotion
  • Participants aimed to quickly grasp the emotional states of others.
  • They valued capturing transient emotions linked to particular experiences.