The Emergence of Technology Adaptations During a Collaborative Problem-Solving Task in Immersive Virtual Reality

Understanding how technology adaptation begins to unfold on a micro-level is important, as it can help gain a better understanding of the process of technology adaptation across different disciplines. This paper describes how technology adaptation can be studied empirically in social interactions between technology users. With the method of longitudinal conversation analysis, we study how participants solve a set of puzzles in immersive virtual reality. We illustrate how technology adaptation can be observed empirically in social interactions between technology users in the occurrence of discrepant events. We show how the discrepant events lead to visible changes in the participants’ problem-solving strategies (i.e., appropriations). These changes are seen as the participants begin to increasingly utilize the affordances of the virtual reality environment. Our findings contribute to CSCW theoretically and methodologically by revealing the micro-level phases of technology adaptation through the participants’ sequential interactions.