…importance of strength of connection, commonality of interests, the “high-touch” of a virtual presence experience mediating the ‘high-tech” issues of a complex technology user interface…
A mini user case study was conducted in April 2020 to explore the question, “What’s needed to be attracted to a virtual world and to stay there afterwards?” The results are relevant to virtual presence platform providers moving products from beta through production to broad commercialization, and to their prospective platform users.
Attended a one-hour remote work event held in VirBELA Open Campus.
Topic was “How to work with your team remotely while improving collaboration and accountability.”
Speaker was Glenn Sanford, CEO of eXp, a company whose employees work online in a VirBELA Business Campus.
There were 165 attending as VirBELA avatars and 56 watching on the YouTube stream.
Speaker, voice, slides, and sound were good. The audience asked questions via text chat and a new “Slido” web app that Glenn was testing. The audience interacted with each other in text and occasional voice.
VirBELA provides basic options for residents to personalize their avatars viz. skin color, hair color, formal attire or casual attire, and glasses or not. Each avatar has a viewable Profile with room to add bio and links as desired.
I asked if eXp is the same as VirBELA – response was eXp is a sibling company of VirBELA.
I asked what accessibilty features were available in VirBELA – response was eXp has staff who are physically handicapped working from home.
I asked what version of Unity 3D VirBELA runs on – response was Unity 2018.
I asked what the largest actual event held in a VirBELA region was – response was 600 to date.
