During a recent tour of DXC Technology’s Virtual World, the first step was to create the avatar that would represent me in the metaverse. While I gamely attempted to produce an accurate reflection of myself in avatar form, I clearly neglected to pay attention to my footwear, so arrived fully formed in a sandals and bow tie ensemble.
Research from the University of Alberta suggests that there tends to be a balancing act between trying to be oneself and trying to enhance oneself when creating our avatar. Interestingly, however, this also seems to affect our behavior online.
“Part of our research says that people with more attractive representations of themselves online report that their behavior online is more extroverted, loud and risk-taking,” the authors explain. “We expect that they keep their core behavioral traits, but some of their behavioral traits become amplified or enhanced, just like they enhance some of their appearance traits.”
Virtual identity
Research from Trinity College Dublin affirms this perception that our avatars are often a crucial way of self-representation that allows us to be creative in how we present ourselves in the virtual world.
“Any experimenting is dictated by the limits of technology, an app, the involved community, or the user themselves, but it still represents a way to feel better or safer in digital worlds that now replace more and more physical-world activities,” the researchers explain.
When we’re designing our avatar in the metaverse, there may be restrictions to how we can represent ourselves based on the available features in the platform itself. For instance, there may only be support for the binary system of genders.
In the virtual cycling platform Zwift, for instance, user’s avatars not only have the usual appearance-based features, such as different skin tones, genders, hair colors, and so on, but also different bikes, kits, and other cycling-related paraphernalia.
“We know that representation matters. We are always striving to add more avatar customization options to the platform to allow our users to represent themselves in the way they would like,” Zwift’s Chris Snook told me via email. “However, one of the beauties about creating an online avatar is that it also gives you the option to represent yourself in an entirely different way. Today, we remain focused on human-formed representation but there could be a time in the future when we explore the world of the fantastical and allow our users to get really expressive!”
Affecting interactions
What is increasingly clear is that the avatars we choose for ourselves do affect how we interact with others in the metaverse. For instance, research from the University of Texas at Arlington found that in a professional setting, it’s important that the avatars people use when interacting with customers are realistic both in their form and their behavior.
“Getting those two parts of an avatar matched is difficult,” the researchers explain. “When the physical and the behavioral aspects don’t synch up, the effectiveness of using avatars can be inconsistent and at best contingent upon the context, such as perceived financial risk.”
This matters, as they found that when exchanges between customers and customer service representatives involve complex matters, customers seem to respond better when the avatar appears not only realistic looking but also intelligent looking. Similarly, when conversations involve matters of a more private nature, such as discussions around mental health, then less realistic avatars seemed to be more effective.
Working together
This even matters in terms of fostering collaboration internally. Research from Erasmus University Rotterdam explored how the look of our avatars impacts the way we behave together as a team.
Participants in the study were asked to work together in solving a crime mystery. The clues were mixed up so that some were available to everyone, whilst others were available only to individual members of the team.
Whilst the publicly available clues pointed to one culprit, when the individual clues were added in, a different answer emerged. The key, therefore, was to collaborate well with one’s teammates. Each team was given 40 minutes to converse with their colleagues using an online platform that only displayed the avatar of each participant.
One group of participants was given all the same avatars, whereas a second group could upload their own image, whilst a third consisted of their own photo along with the photos of what they thought were their teammates. After the task had been completed, participants were asked how they felt about their teammates.
The results revealed that those in the latter group reported a greater social bond with their colleagues than their peers in the other two groups. These groups also outperformed their peers by around 20 percent.
The researchers suggest that this is because the generic and unique avatars both harm team cohesion. Pictures of individuals, for instance, do little to create team bonding, whilst generic images simply underline our distance from a real workplace.
So, while at the moment our avatars take on a somewhat clumsy appearance, it’s almost inevitable that they will grow to be more sophisticated, such that we have a wardrobe of different styles and outfits that suit our mood and circumstances on any given day.
“We want to build avatars so that they’re highly representative of you as an individual, and we’re doing more and more in terms of enhancing that experience so that it’s a true representation of you as a person,” Christine Trodella, VP of Meta Reality Labs, told me. “Your avatar should be something you can personalize with different accouterments that represent you and your personality and we’re already starting to see that being used in a way that can help to express you and your emotions.”
Whether this evolves into official or unofficial policies from HR on what employees can “wear” in the metaverse remains to be seen, but the days of sandals and bow ties may well be numbered.
