JAMIA Open, 6(1), 2023, ooad010

https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad010
Research and Applications

Research and Applications

Adopting a metaverse-based workspace to support

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research team collaboration: a pilot study from an
academic health informatics laboratory
Siyi Zhu1,2, Scott Vennemeyer1, Catherine Xu1,3, and Danny T.Y. Wu 1,2,3

1
Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 2School of Design,
College of Design Architecture, Art, and Planning, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA and 3Medical Sciences Bacca-
laureate Program, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Corresponding Author: Danny T.Y. Wu, PhD, MSI, FAMIA, Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine,
University of Cincinnati, Medical Science Building ML0840, 231 Albert Sabin Way, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA;
wutz@ucmail.uc.edu
Received 5 October 2022; Revised 5 January 2023; Editorial Decision 6 January 2023; Accepted 8 February 2023

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study aimed to understand how a metaverse-based (virtual) workspace can be used to support
the communication and collaboration in an academic health informatics lab.
Materials and Methods: A survey of lab members (n ¼ 14) was analyzed according to a concurrent triangulation
mixed methods design. The qualitative survey data were organized according to the Capability, Opportunity,
Motivation, Behavior (COM-B) model and combined to generate personas that represent the overall types of lab
members. Additionally, scheduled work hours were analyzed quantitatively to complement the findings of the
survey feedback.
Results: Four personas, representative of different types of virtual workers, were developed using the survey
responses. These personas reflected the wide variety of opinions about virtual work among the participants
and helped to categorize the most common feedback. The Work Hours Schedule Sheet analysis showed the
low number of possible collaboration opportunities that were utilized compared to the number available.
Discussion: We found that informal communication and co-location were not supported by the virtual work-
place as we had originally planned. To solve this issue, we offer 3 design recommendations for those looking to
implement their own virtual informatics lab. First, labs should establish common goals and norms for virtual
workplace interactions. Second, labs should carefully plan the virtual space layout to maximize communication
opportunities. Finally, labs should work with their platform of choice to address technical limitations for their
lab members to improve user experience. Future work includes a formal, theory-guided experiment with con-
sideration on ethical and behavioral impact.

Key words: virtual reality, communication, user-centered design

C The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.
V
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),
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2 JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1
Lay Summary
In this pilot study, researchers looked at how a virtual workspace (metaverse) could be used to improve communication and
collaboration in an academic health informatics lab. They surveyed 14 lab members and analyzed the responses using a
mixed-method approach. They also looked at how often the lab members were working together. The researchers found
that the virtual workspace did not support informal communication or co-location (the feeling of being in the same location).
Based on this finding, the researchers made 3 recommendations for improving virtual workspace. These included setting
common goals and norms for virtual interactions, designing the virtual space to maximize communication opportunities,
and addressing technical issues to improve the user experience.
BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic immediately
changed the way that we interact and collaborate in the workplace.
In the beginning, most in-person meetings and conversation were no
longer an option for workers looking to carry out their daily tasks.
Thanks to today’s advanced communication technologies, remote
collaboration helped mitigate the impact of social distancing. Many
workers, however, feel that online collaboration is very different
than in-person work. Anecdotally, most complaints about synchro-
nous online collaboration focus on lackluster social connections and
the loss of casual conversation opportunities. Currently, applica-
tions use remote collaboration techniques like audio teleconferenc-
ing, video, and web conferencing, and “telepresence” solutions like
virtual reality and augmented reality.
To collaborate, workers must participate in group activities,
interact with other people and synthesize new knowledge.1 Audio
and video conferencing tools are capable of supporting comprehen-
sive collaboration on sophisticated tasks with web-based applica-
tions like Miro.2 Even with progress in recent years on these
technologies, informal conversation is difficult in a virtual work-
place.3,4 Another bottleneck for collaboration in virtual teams is
transferring “tacit knowledge,” knowledge that is difficult to
express through written or spoken word.4–6 In an in-person work-
place, teams participate in groups, interact, and synthesize informa-
tion more easily1 because all necessary team members are located in
the same physical space. This concept, called “co-location,”
increases collaboration opportunities, promotes socialization, and
eventually facilitates tacit knowledge exchange,7 which plays a crit-
ical role in group innovation.8 When compared to remote collabora-
tion, in-person work avoids the social isolation experienced while
working from home and prevents telecommuters from “miss[ing]
idle conversations in the hallway and other informal con-
versations.”9 In virtual teams, communication without seeing
others’ facial expressions is often more explicit and formal than
face-to-face communication.6 As informal communication becomes
less frequent, the exchange of tacit knowledge also decreases.10 This
can result in less innovative collaboration in virtual teams than in-
person. Therefore, finding a way for virtual teams to recreate a sense
of “co-location” may help team members communicate informally
and collaborate innovatively.
Spaces for “co-location” can be virtual workplaces (eg, Meta
Horizon Workrooms11) or in real offices (eg, Microsoft Holoporta-
tion12 and Telepresence Robot13). These so-called metaverse tech-
nologies, in addition to other kinds of telepresence technologies,
help people collaborate online. Currently, metaverse technologies
are defined as immersive 3-dimensional virtual worlds in which mul-
tiple users interact with each other.14 The definition of metaverse
can be expanded or more accurately coined. Almoqbel et al15 con-
ducted a systematic review to map metaverse definitions in 4
aspects, including Users and Roles, Activity, Content Creation, and
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Tech Specs. The idea of a metaverse is not new. As early as 1978,
simple virtual worlds like Richard Bartle’s Multi-user Dungeon or
Multi-user Dimension (MUD) were beginning to shape how design-
ers approached the creation of a virtual environment. These early
metaverses were usually text-based or storyboarded.16 Although
more vivid 3-dimensional virtual worlds have been created on differ-
ent platforms in recent years, there are still 2-dimensional virtual
worlds used for low-cost metaverse experiences.17 These offer tele-
commuters the ability to co-locate and interact in the virtual world
in a similar fashion to a face-to-face office, which theoretically
makes virtual teams capable of informal communication.
Informal communication is critical in distributed scientific work
and considered as a mediating factor to productivity; and affected
by factors including a concentration of suitable partners, co-
presence, and establishing and sharing common ground.18 Meta-
verse technologies provide a virtual space where people with com-
mon interest can collaborate. However, creating informal
communication in a virtual space is not as simple as it is in a face-to-
face workplace. Frequent communication in virtual settings can
cause cognitive overload and have a negative impact on team proc-
esses and outcomes.19 Telecommuters often do not communicate
with anyone outside of their team, thereby reducing their informal
communication network.20 This was different from what was
expected of metaverse-based online collaboration.
OBJECTIVES
This pilot study addressed this gap by asking the following research
questions: (1) Is co-location for virtual teams supported by a virtual
workplace? (2) How is informal communication carried out in a vir-
tual workplace? It focused on a health informatics lab at a research
university and looked to generate design recommendations for a vir-
tual workspace. While computer-supported collaborative work
(CSCW) theories, frameworks, and methods have been adopted in
the healthcare domain, many of them are focused on clinical work
environment.21–23 To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
study focused on the health informatics research collaboration using
metaverse.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study setting
The corresponding author’s laboratory (the lab hereafter) is an inter-
disciplinary data science lab at the University of Cincinnati College
of Medicine. The lab consists of around 20 students at both the
undergraduate and graduate level in a wide range of disciplines
including health informatics, medical sciences, design, and computer
science. The lab uses a technique called “matrix management”24 in
JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1
Table 1. Teams in the lab
Team Number of Division of teams
divisions
Skill-based teams 3 Research, Technical, and Design Teams
Project-based teams 8 Teams A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H
order to coordinate efforts between members in different teams so
that the lab can effectively develop data-intensive and user-friendly
systems to address clinical and health problems. Lab members are
assigned into 3 skill-based teams and 8 project-based teams
(Table 1). The 3 skill-based teams are the research team, the design
team, and the technical team. The 8 project-based teams are labeled
A–H and correspond to a team working on a single project. Project-
based team members come from all 3 of the skill-based teams. Lab
members have variable working hours based on their commitment.
The lab members can perform tasks individually and/or collabo-
ratively, depending on the nature of the tasks (eg, literature search,
affinity diagramming, group discussion, manuscript writing). Micro-
soft Teams was used as the primary online platform due to the insti-
tutional support in the beginning of the pandemic (March 2020). In
the middle of the pandemic (June 2021), another online platform
called Gather (https://www.gather.town) was employed. Gather is a
2-dimensional pixel-style metaverse-based video chat platform for
collaboration. This platform was chosen because of its convenient
access, low (zero) cost for small group collaboration (25 people and
below), and high customizability in the virtual space layout. Figure 1
shows an example layout of the virtual lab space.
Study design
This study used a concurrent triangulation design25 to infer factors
that would help facilitate collaboration in virtual academic teams.
Because of the dynamic nature of academic work and online collab-
oration, multiple dimensions of data were required to understand
and interpret observed work patterns. In parallel, we collected 2
major types of data: (1) qualitative and quantitative data from an
online survey questionnaire about work experience and (2) quantita-
tive data from the lab’s Work Hours Schedule Sheet.
The data collection was guided by the workspace awareness
framework, especially the knowledge in “where” and “when”26
since Gather affords co-presence and co-location in a visual space
compared to traditional online meeting tools (eg, Microsoft Teams,
WebEx, and, Zoom). Of note, the study did not focus on the explo-
ration and the action aspects of the workspace awareness frame-
work because they are based on the knowledge gained. In other
words, no exploration or actions would occur until team members
are co-located in a virtual space and read for task collaboration.
The qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed concur-
rently and then compared to identify similarities or differences in the
findings. The full process is outlined in Figure 2 below and detailed
methods of collection and analysis are described in the following
sections. The study was reviewed by the institutional review board
(IRB) and determined as not human subject research (IRB# 2021-
0881).
Online Collaboration Experience Survey
The Online Collaboration Experience Survey collected qualitative
and quantitative data related to lab members’ experiences of collab-
orating online. The survey questionnaire was created using
3
Microsoft Forms (https://forms.office.com) and distributed to lab
members via email. The qualitative data came from free-text long
response style questions. The quantitative data came from a series of
multiple-choice questions.
The focus of the qualitative section of the survey was lab mem-
bers’ experience with remote work. To design the survey questions
and analyze the responses, the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation,
Behavior (COM-B) model27 was used. The COM-B model relates a
person’s capability, opportunity, and motivation to complete any
given behavior to the behavior itself. It also examines how the
behavior, in turn, influences those factors. The questions for this
survey, then, were designed to understand the capacity, the opportu-
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nity, and the motivation that each worker had to join the virtual
workspace.
The survey’s quantitative questions compared collaborative
activities between the online and offline environments and identified
issues pertaining to using the virtual lab for collaboration. Table 2
shows questions and choices for both sections of the survey.
Quantitative survey data analysis
There were 2 quantitative questions asked as part of the survey: (1)
online activities and (2) offline activities. Both questions had the
same set of choices. The first 2 choices were “Group meeting” and
“Individual meeting,” which are both related to schedule-based, for-
mal meetings. The other 3 choices were “Working together,”
“Parties/Gatherings,” and “Games,” which are related to collabora-
tion opportunities that are more informal. Lab members’ choices in
these 2 questions were summarized and compared to distinguish the
differences between lab members’ experiences.
Qualitative survey data analysis
The free-text responses to the survey questions were analyzed to dis-
cover themes across participants based on the COM-B model. First,
all the data collected from the survey were coded by their relevance
to collaboration in a process called “open coding.” Then, these
codes were grouped into categories according to the COM-B
model27 in a process called “axial coding.” Category 1 consists of
codes that describe lab members’ behaviors. Category 2 is made up
of codes that indicate lab members’ capabilities, opportunities, and
motivations. Category 3 contains codes of information unrelated to
the COM-B model, like career goals and other demographic
information.
To provide a full picture of typical users, we constructed per-
sonas (fictional characters that represent how users might interact
with a system28). To form these personas, the most frequently men-
tioned behaviors in Category 1 were recombined with corresponding
motivations in Category 2. Then, groups of behaviors that occur
commonly together were created so that the personas represent how
typical lab members behave in the virtual workspace. Codes in cate-
gory 3 were used to provide context about what type of lab member
(which skill-based team or project-based team, for example) falls
into each persona.
Work Hours Schedule Sheet
The Work Hours Schedule Sheet is a shared worksheet containing the
work hours commitment and semester schedule of all lab members
that helps arrange potential collaboration opportunities by making all
schedules available to view by all members. Since the schedule sheet
records the overall work hours of lab members and overlapping hours
4 JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1

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Figure 1. Virtual lab of the corresponding author’s lab in Gather. This figure shows the workplace layout. Area 1 shows the personal offices. Area 2 shows the div-
ided meeting rooms for different teams. Area 3 shows the large meeting room for lab meetings.

Figure 2. Process of this study.

with others, this sheet is a useful tool to facilitate possible spontaneous
collaboration opportunities among the lab members.
The version used in this study was a Microsoft Excel document
that contained 30-min time slots ranging from 8:30 AM to 10:30 PM
Monday to Friday. For each day, there were 2 columns indicating
whether the work will be done in the virtual lab or in the physical
lab. Using this table, the lab members put their initials on the blocks
to indicate when and where they will be working. The lab members
were asked to log onto the virtual lab as much as possible even
when they were working in the physical lab space.
The schedule sheet focused on the collaboration opportunities
each lab member had with their partners in project-based teams and
skill-based teams. A lab member’s collaboration opportunities in a
shared time slot were defined as a combination of the total number
of members assigned for a given time slot because the minimum
number of members needed for collaboration is 2. We defined the
calculation of collaboration opportunities as COOPi , and the num-
ber of lab members signed up for the same shared time slot as nswt .
The calculation of collaboration opportunities, then, is expressed as:
COOPi ¼ Cn2swt :
This formula indicates the intensity of collaboration in ideal situa-
tion, as lab members’ willingness to collaborate is difficult to meas-
ure accurately and was not considered for this analysis. Of note,
collaboration opportunities can lead to formal and/or informal
collaboration.
Because the number of members in a team varies, we introduced
a “collaboration opportunities rate” to perform cross-team compar-
isons (labeled in this model as COOPi %). This percentage indicates
the proportion of collaboration opportunities in one group in a
JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1 5

Table 2. Online Collaboration Experience Survey questions and choices

Questions Answers

Quantitative section
Q1 Which of the following activities have Group meeting Individual meeting Working together Gathering Games
you ever taken part in online with
others?
Q2 Which of the following activities have Group meeting Individual meeting Working together Gathering Games
you ever taken part in offline that
can be related to collaboration?
Qualitative section
Q3 Please describe your typical day Free text
working remotely for the lab.

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Q4 Please describe the pros and cons of Free text
using the virtual lab.
Q5 What’s your opinion about online Free text
collaboration? And how does it
relate to the virtual lab?
Q6 How does the virtual lab annoy when Free text
you work remotely online?
Q7 How does the virtual lab satisfy you Free text
when you work remotely online?
Q8 Please describe your goal working in Free text
the lab.
Q9 What do you think the virtual lab is Multi-choice and free text
most suitable to do?
Q10 Which of the following issues do you Multi-choice and free text
meet when using the virtual lab?

week compared to the maximum possible collaboration opportuni-
ties. The maximum possible collaboration (max COOPi ) was the
number of collaboration opportunities a team of lab members has if
they are all signed for a same time slot. The number of lab members
in a team was denoted as ntotal . So, the calculation of collaboration
opportunities rate is:
COOPi Cnswt
COOPi % ¼ ¼ n2total  100%:
max COOPi C2
With this calculation method, the schedule sheet enabled us to com-
pare collaboration opportunities between skill-based teams as well
as project-based teams.
Data triangulation
Once the qualitative and quantitative data from the survey and the
collaboration opportunity rate from the schedule sheet were ana-
lyzed separately, the 2 sources of data were compared to determine
issues that prevent lab members from collaboration in the virtual
lab. Each set of data revealed a different aspect of online collabora-
tion. The qualitative data from the survey investigated how a typical
worker feels about collaboration in the virtual lab. The quantitative
data of the survey showed the difference between online collabora-
tion activities and offline collaboration activities. The schedule sheet
provided a numerical description of collaboration opportunities
under current lab settings. Combined, these datasets provide a full
and accurate picture of collaboration in the virtual lab space.
RESULTS
Online Collaboration Experience Survey
Fourteen out of 15 eligible lab members in October 2021 responded
to the survey (93% response rate). Out of the 20 total lab members,
3 members of the lab did not have access to the virtual lab on
Gather, and 2 members are researchers of this study and were there-
fore not eligible to participate. All skill-based teams were included
in this survey. Of the respondents, 6 were from the research team, 5
were from the technical team, and 3 were from the design team. The
respondents’ ages ranged from 18 to 26 years old, and all of
respondents worked at the lab as a part-time job or as a volunteer.
Meetings were the major collaborative activity regardless of
online or offline status. All respondents (n ¼ 14, 100%) indicated
that meetings were a part of their online collaboration experience.
Slightly fewer respondents claimed that they collaborated with
others using in-person meetings. Twelve respondents (85.71%)
reported they had group meetings (meetings with more than 2 peo-
ple), and 11 respondents (78.57%) had meetings with others
individually.
More lab members engaged in non-meeting-related collaboration
activities more often when in-person compared to when online. For
example, working/learning together is a predominant activity of off-
line collaboration. Eleven respondents (78.57%) reported that they
work and learn together with others offline. In contrast, all activities
other than meeting to work or learn were reported by <3 respond-
ents. A full summary of these results can be found in Figure 3 below.
Persona generation
Eight behavior-related codes were identified in Category 1. Twenty-
nine source-related codes were indentified in Category 2, which rep-
resent the capabilities, opportunities, and motivations that lead to
those behaviors identified in Category 1. The 9 codes that are not
related to the COM-B model27 were included in Category 3. A full
list of codes as they relate to the formation of personas can be made
available upon request. After adding details from Category 3, 4 per-
sonas were created.
6 JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1
Figure 3. Lab members’ online collaborative activities and offline collaborative activities.
Persona I is “Collaborative” Carmen. She is a member of Design
Skill-based Team. She usually works on her own. She likes to use
platforms like Miro and WebEx to communicate with her partners.
But as a designer, she wants to have a more active role in this lab,
have more meetings on deliberating design, and dedicatedly serve as
a design professional.
Persona II is “Indifferent” Isaac. He is from the Technical Skill-
based Team. Collaboration is one required section of his work, but
most of his work requires additional software and documents that
are not on Gather. He believes using Gather would make his online
workflow more complicated, so to stay efficient, he uses alternative
meeting platforms that use less computing resources.
Persona III is “Online” Olivia. She is a researcher at the lab. She
stays in the virtual lab during her work hours and is open to talk to
people. However, she often misses notifications from Gather when
she switched away from the Gather tab in her browser. It is also
frustrating when she cannot get others’ responses due to the same
issue of missing messages while having Gather open on another tab
but not directly on the platform.
Persona IV is named “Focused” Fred. Fred is a member of the
Technical Skill-based Team. For most of his work hours, he works
on his own without needing to collaborate with others. He keeps
Gather open occasionally. And if he gets a message, it startles him,
interrupting his flow of work, as does not think that others need to
reach out to him normally.
Work Hour Schedule Sheet
The results of the analysis of the Work Hour Schedule Sheet show
that collaboration opportunities are generally uneven between
project-based teams and skill-based teams. The maximum usage rate
is from Team A, utilizing only 7.13% of their possible collaboration
opportunities, followed by Team H (6.44%). The remaining
project-based teams utilize <2% of their maximum possible collab-
oration opportunities. Project-based teams D and E (shown in
Table 1) had no collaboration opportunities in a week. On the other
hand, skill-based teams have less opportunities for collaboration
than project-based teams. All skill-based teams have a week-wide
collaboration rate around 2%. Full results are shared below in
Table 3.
Data triangulation
The qualitative results from the survey show that most lab members
want to collaborate with others. Despite this desire, many workers
feel that the lab lacks informal social opportunities that would make
them more comfortable communicating with their team members.
One possible cause for this discomfort could be from confusion
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between lab members about the expectations for communication in
the virtual lab. Many of these concerns are represented by Persona
II, “Indifferent Isaac,” who suggests that lab members were indiffer-
ent to collaborating in the virtual lab. A worker that fits this persona
would not be interested in utilizing a virtual workspace where others
could drop in unannounced and does not prefer to keep another
platform open on their computer. Other personas showed that infor-
mal communication was difficult to achieve even though members
were co-located in the virtual lab.
The quantitative data from the survey also supports the qualita-
tive findings. The type of collaborative activities that lab members
participated in were different between online and offline settings.
Only a few members participated in online activities that support
informal communication, such as working together and gaming.
This contrasts with offline collaborative activities, which were expe-
rienced by most members of the lab.
The results of the schedule sheet analysis further confirmed that
the overall opportunities to collaborate or have informal communi-
cation are low for all lab members. Project-based teams D and E, for
example, did not have any shared time slots in which teammates
could collaborate.
Comparing the 3 sets of data, the lack of collaboration in the vir-
tual lab is not due to a lack of motivation from lab members to col-
laborate. This is due to (1) low scheduled time in the virtual lab
means that lab members do not have the opportunity (other than in
scheduled meetings) to connect with one another informally, and (2)
lab members approach work in the virtual environment with varying
expectations; some lab members expect their coworkers to be con-
stantly available if their avatar is present in the virtual workspace,
whereas others do not want to be bothered even if they are present
in the virtual workspace.
DISCUSSION
This study used a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design to
assess how co-location and informal communication are supported
in a virtual workspace. The results showed that adopting a
metaverse-based virtual workplace did not improve informal com-
munication for workers collaborating remotely, even though work-
ers were “co-located” in the same virtual space. This is supported by
current literature acknowledging that the relationship between
informal communication and co-location is not the same as in a
face-to-face workplace7,10 due to factors like increased cognitive
load in virtual settings.
We offer 2 additional reasons why co-location alone does not cre-
ate informal communication opportunities in the same way that face-
to-face workplaces can. First, although many opportunities for co-
JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1
Table 3. Collaboration opportunities of project-based teams and skill-based teams in the lab
Project-based teams
A B C D
Number of lab members (ntotal ) 4 3 3 5
Total possible collaboration per week 62 9 5 0 0
(COOPi )
Maximum possible collaboration per 870 435 435 1450
week (max COOPi )
Collaboration opportunities rate 7.13% 2.07% 1.15% 0.00%
(COOPni %)
location exist in our lab, lab members rarely take advantage of them
because their schedules do not align. Flexibility in scheduling, how-
ever, is necessary and common in an academic health informatics lab
because the majority of the workers are students and need to work
around classes and other school responsibilities and commitments.
Secondly, even though team members may be present in the virtual
workspace, they are not always ready to collaborate. This is modeled
by interactions between lab members who match the personas of
“Collaborator Carmen” and “Indifferent Isaac,” for example. To
mitigate these gaps, we offer 3 recommendations below for teams
looking to design and implement a metaverse-based workplace.
Design recommendations for metaverse workplaces
Establish common goals and norms for the virtual workplace
In our study, some virtual workers, represented by personas
“Collaborator Carmen” and “Online Olivia,” consider metaverse-
based work platforms to be analogous to the face-to-face workplace.
They consider their presence in the virtual workplace like punching
in at a timeclock at work. Other virtual workers, represented by per-
sonas like “Focused Fred” and “Indifferent Isaac,” did not feel this
way, regarding the virtual workspace as yet another window to have
open on their screen; another application to minimize on their com-
puter without paying attention to possible opportunities for collabo-
ration. As a result, potential collaboration opportunities can be
halted, and the point of the virtual workspace could be missed.
To solve this issue, organizations and virtual workplace develop-
ers should consider establishing common goals and standards for tel-
ecommuters using a virtual workplace before rolling out this new
technology. Addressing expectations for collaboration may help
soften areas of contention between workers. For example, after fin-
ishing this analysis, we clarified with team members that “logging-
in” to the virtual workplace should be like a sitting with your “door
open” in a face-to-face workplace because it provides an opportu-
nity for meeting and exchanging knowledge rather than simply
showing that someone is working on tasks. We also clarified that, if
a worker did not want to be disturbed, they should use the built in
“Do Not Disturb” (also called “Quiet Time”) feature to indicate
that they are working on a task and wished to not be interrupted.
This feature also allows for workers to write a quick message which
could include the best way to contact them.
Increase communication opportunities by space planning
According to the results of the survey, scheduled meetings are the
center of collaborative activity in our office. This was confirmed by
the Work Hours Schedule Sheet which showed that our lab members
schedule their work hours largely around showing up for meetings
without considering their team members’ schedules. This leads to
7
Skill-based teams
E F G H Research Design Technical
2 3 3 3 9 4 6
7 8 28 90 21 37
145 435 435 435 5220 870 2175
0.00% 1.60% 1.84% 6.44% 1.72% 2.41% 1.70%
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insufficient informal collaboration opportunities. Additionally, even
when multiple workers from the same teams are present together in
the virtual office, they did not often utilize their potential collabora-
tion time. This is confirmed by the low overall “Collaborations
Opportunity Rate” calculated above, with the highest rate being
around 7% of opportunities to collaborate used.
One possible reason that workers do not collaborate, even when
they are both present in the virtual office, is that their avatars are
too far apart to interact. To increase communication opportunities
in a virtual workplace, we recommend that office designers lay out
the virtual space so that workers are encouraged to collaborate with
one another. In other words, instead of creating divided personal
office spaces (Figure 1), designers should aim to create an “Activity-
Based Workplace.” Activity-Based workplaces provide different set-
tings for each work activity.29 Rooms can be created for specific
teams of workers (in our case project-based teams and skill-based
teams) so that collaboration on shared projects is encouraged by
workers being near their peers.
Improve user experience by addressing technical limitations
There are many technical limitations for the adoption of the meta-
verse technologies for remote work. Staying online while working
on technical tasks may require telecommuters to have high-
performance computers, which would lead to an increase in cost for
organizations. Other issues like audio and video quality also influ-
ence people’s experience of using metaverse-based platforms.
Gather, the online meeting platform that we used for this study, is
still a growing application and does not contain some of the more
developed features (ie, virtual backgrounds, polls, advanced settings
for meetings) of an older platform such as Skype, Microsoft Teams,
WebEx, or Zoom. Additionally, some workers preferred to join the
virtual space using a mobile device. At the time of conducting this
study, Gather does not fully support this method, which added an
additional barrier to entry for some workers. As an emerging tech-
nology, many areas for further study exist for the usability of meta-
verse applications for online collaboration.
Limitations and future research
This study has a few limitations. First, it is a pilot study in a single
academic dry lab. The data collected here were specific to this lab
and may not be representative of every experience. Next, the first
layout of the virtual lab space was implemented by the director of
the lab, not by a designer, nor by all lab team members (co-design).
To mitigate the impact that this might have had, however, the layout
of the virtual space was refined multiple times based on feedback
from the rest of the team prior to the conduction of the present
study. Finally, other metaverse platforms were not explored to select
8 JAMIA Open, 2023, Vol. 6, No. 1
the best fit for our lab. We chose Gather out of convenient access
and ease of use. It is possible that another platform would have
solved many of the issues that we faced. It is also possible that other
organizations utilizing Gather would not experience the same issues
as our team. A comparison between virtual platforms would be
helpful to discover which one best supports collaboration in our
team. Our future work includes a redesigned lab layout to encourage
informal communication and collaboration and an incentive pro-
gram to promote participation in the virtual lab. The design, imple-
mentation, and evaluation of the new virtual lab space will be
guided by CSCW literature. The ethical and behavioral impact of
such changes on study participants (workers) will be approved by
the IRB to ensure that the benefits (eg, work efficiency) outweigh
the potential harms in a formal experiment.
CONCLUSION
In this study, we found that virtual collaboration tools can allow for
co-location and informal communication among workers but often
fall short due to differing expectations and attitudes from workers
utilizing the system. Because of this, we recommend that teams look-
ing to implement a similar system for their own workplaces establish
common goals and norms for time spent in virtual workplaces, plan
virtual space wisely to maximize potential collaboration opportuni-
ties, and address technical limitations whenever possible so that
users can work seamlessly, without interruption.
FUNDING
This research was supported by the corresponding author’s (Wu) start-up
fund and received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public,
commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
DTYW designed the study and mentored SZ to conduct the data col-
lection. SZ created the figures and drafted the original manuscript.
SV and CX revised the original manuscript and SV drafted the final
copy and significantly improved the content. CX proofread the revi-
sion of the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and pro-
vided critical feedback to the content of the manuscript.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Supplementary material is available at JAMIA Open online.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Gather (https://www.gather.town/) for their permission to
use the screenshots of their system.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
None declared.
DATA AVAILABILITY
The data underlying this article, including the survey questions, the
survey responses, the work hour schedule sheet, are available in the
article and in its online supplementary material.
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