Exploring Communication and Collaboration in Distributed AR Escape Rooms: Design Opportunities to Support Social Play

Paper Title

Exploring Communication and Collaboration in Distributed AR Escape Rooms: Design Opportunities to Support Social Play

Publication Info

• Topic area: Distributed and hybrid augmented reality (AR) systems for social play and collaboration.
• Keywords: Augmented reality, escape rooms, distributed collaboration, hybrid configurations, social play, multimodal communication, embodied interaction, situation awareness, role asymmetry, design implications.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Designing AR systems for distributed and hybrid social play is challenging due to the need to support meaningful collaboration, maintain situation awareness, and balance engagement across spatially separated participants. Existing work has not fully explored how AR’s embodied interaction capabilities influence multiplayer social dynamics in these contexts.
• Significance: Distributed and hybrid AR escape rooms can foster social connection and engagement across physical distances, addressing the need for interactive experiences that maintain relationships in modern, geographically dispersed contexts.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has explored co-located and distributed play in AR and VR, but hybrid configurations remain underexplored. Escape rooms, with their collaborative problem-solving nature, provide a unique lens to study these dynamics. This paper builds on work in XR-supported social play and escape room design to address gaps in understanding how AR’s capabilities and constraints shape distributed collaboration and social experiences.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The authors developed an AR-based escape room system as a technology probe to study communication, collaboration, and social dynamics in distributed and hybrid configurations.
• Novelty:
  1. Empirical insights into how multimodal communication supports distributed AR social play.
  2. Analysis of role asymmetry and spatial configurations in hybrid and distributed settings.
  3. Design implications for creating engaging and inclusive AR escape room experiences.
  4. Exploration of AR’s embodied interaction capabilities for maintaining situation awareness across spaces.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Developed a mobile AR escape room system with five puzzles requiring distributed collaboration.
  • Integrated three communication channels: voice chat, text messaging, and a collaborative whiteboard.
  • Conducted an exploratory study with 19 participants across eight groups (five fully distributed, three hybrid).
  • Analyzed video and audio recordings, questionnaires, and interviews to identify communication patterns, collaboration dynamics, and embodied interaction strategies.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants dynamically transitioned between communication channels (voice, whiteboard, text) based on puzzle complexity, information persistence needs, and communication breakdowns.
  • Physical movement around virtual objects supported distributed co-presence but caused fatigue over time.
  • Role asymmetry (information-giver vs. action-taker) created engagement imbalances, with information-givers often feeling passive.
  • Hybrid configurations introduced inclusion challenges for remote participants due to asymmetric situation awareness.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Demonstrated how AR’s embodied interaction capabilities enable unique forms of distributed co-presence not achievable in VR or screen-based systems.
  • Highlighted the importance of multimodal communication and spatial coordination for maintaining engagement and social connection.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Participants: 19 individuals (10 male, 9 female, average age 25.3) in eight groups.
  • Configurations: Five fully distributed groups, three hybrid groups.
  • Methods: Video/audio recordings, debriefing interviews, questionnaires, and thematic analysis.
  • Metrics: Communication effectiveness, puzzle completion, engagement, and social connection.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited participant diversity (young adults with pre-existing relationships).
  • Short-term study with predefined puzzles; long-term dynamics remain unexplored.
  • Reliance on handheld mobile AR, which introduced fatigue; future work could explore head-mounted displays and richer feedback mechanisms.
  • Asymmetric hybrid configurations studied; balanced hybrid setups warrant further investigation.

Summary

This study investigates how distributed and hybrid AR escape rooms support social play, focusing on communication, collaboration, and embodied interaction. Findings reveal that participants adapted multimodal communication strategies and physical movements to maintain coordination and situation awareness across spaces. Challenges included role asymmetry, inclusion dynamics in hybrid setups, and physical fatigue. The paper provides design implications for enhancing distributed AR experiences, emphasizing multimodal communication, equitable collaboration, and flexible embodied interaction. These insights contribute to designing more inclusive and engaging AR systems for social play in distributed and hybrid contexts.