The Influence of Environmental Context on the Creation of Cartoon-like Avatars in Virtual Reality

The user study presented in this paper explores the effects that being immersed in different virtual scenes has on a user’s avatar-design behavior. For this purpose, we have developed a character creation tool that lets users configure their appearance in Virtual Reality. This tool has then been employed in a user study involving 33 participants, who were asked to configure a virtual avatar in a beach and a hospital environment. Our results show that the environment that participants were immersed in influenced their design behavior, with the beach environment leading to a more extensive use of accessories than the hospital scene. Against our expectations, most participants stated to have had little intention to represent either their real or ideal selves, instead opting to explore different characters that they found funny, likable, or interesting. In addition, we found indications for a possible connection between the participants’ feelings of presence and how they incorporate features of themselves into their avatar designs.