Bank of Ireland Tests Meetings in Virtual Reality

This paper summaries a case study conducted by Meetingroom and Bank of Ireland in exploring the use of virtual reality to conduct meetings online. The case study was to compare virtual reality meetings to traditional video teleconferencing software. The results point to the improved feelings of presence, closeness, and arousal for virtual reality environments, but also demonstrate a difference in the experience for female and male participants. In particular, the use of avatars instead of real-life video images of the participants was preferred by female participants which point to a possible de-biasing ability for virtual reality environments.