Interaction and evaluation tools for collaborative virtual environment

The design of the virtual environment (VE) has to take into account several factors including the input and output devices, the design of the interaction metaphor and the application domain. In addition to these considerations, the design of collaborative virtual environment (CVE) needs to take into account the collaborative aspect of the interaction metaphor. in one hand, the interaction metaphor must be designed to produce the most possible task performance. In the other hand, the influence of the interaction metaphor on the user's experience (in terms of psychological and social considerations) constitutes an important research question. To address this research question, we presented a new user-centred method for Collaborative Virtual Environments in taking into account human factors. Our goal is to study the effect of 3D interaction metaphors in CVE on copresence, involvement, awareness and collaborative effort. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.