  When collaborating face-to-face, people commonly use the surfaces and spaces
around them to perform sensemaking tasks, such as spatially organising
documents, notes or images. However, when people collaborate remotely using
desktop interfaces they no longer feel like they are sharing the same space.
This limitation may be overcome through collaboration in immersive
environments, which simulate the physical in-person experience. In this paper,
we report on a between-groups study comparing collaborations on image
organisation tasks, in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment to more
conventional desktop conferencing. Collecting data from 40 subjects in groups
of four, we measured task performance, user behaviours, collaboration
engagement and awareness. Overall, the VR and desktop interface resulted in
similar speed, accuracy and social presence rating, but we observed more
conversations and interaction with objects, and more equal contributions to the
interaction from participants within groups in VR. We also identified
differences in coordination and collaborative awareness behaviours between VR
and desktop platforms. We report on a set of systematic measures for assessing
VR collaborative experience and a new analysis tool that we have developed to
capture user behaviours in collaborative setting. Finally, we provide design
considerations and directions for future work.
