The Value of Immersive Communication Systems in Online Meetings: A Problem Statement and Literature Review

Traditional online meeting platforms present several limitations, including lower engagement and productivity, worse social interactions and communication, and technical challenges. TNO believes that Immersive Communication Systems (ICSs), thanks to their higher level of social presence, can overcome the drawbacks of non-immersive meetings and improve the overall experience of the users. In this paper, we first present a literature review showing how the social presence of ICSs leads to various added values, such as enhanced effectiveness, increased creative ideas, and better communication. The findings suggest that it is best to evaluate the Quality of Experience (QoE) of ICSs compared to traditional meeting platforms relying on subjective measures of usability, perceived effectiveness, and social presence, while objective measurements should be seen as complementary. Such QoE evaluations are crucial to also ensure the readiness and feasibility of a system's deployment. We proceed by describing the ICS developed by TNO that makes use of photo-realistic user representations given by the 3D point cloud technology. We briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages between the state of the art and the TNO ICS, while we also bring important system aspects that should be considered for improved user experience. Lastly, we propose three research questions to guide future evaluation of the TNO system based on the most prominent subjective factors that were identified by our literature review.