Avatar density in virtual spaces
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asking researchers and industry experts, “What is the ideal number of avatars collaborating in a space?”
I thought I would share the initial feedback and pose the question to all of you here while I continue to research.
When virtual spaces are used for performing tasks in collaborative settings, there seems to be a consensus among the people I’ve talked to that effectiveness begins to decline in groups larger than 9 avatars.
This theory is reinforced by non-virtual world related research on group problem solving by the likes of Joseph E. McGrath and others.
I really like where Christopher Allen is headed with his posts on Dunbar’s Number, a theoretical limit to the number of active social relationships one can maintain. He and some of his commenters allude to the same group size of 7-9. I hear that Christopher recently gave an excellent presentation which expanded on some of this research and hope he will blog it soon.
There are also technology-based sweet spots that vary depending on the platform and application. Some popular 2D Flash worlds often appear crowded when more than a dozen avatars are in a space. This of course varies depending on avatar size relative to the space.
Graphically intensive 3D worlds get the benefit of an expanded area for representing avatars but also can sometimes suffer from lag caused by the intense stream of 3D data being synchronized between users’ computers.
What do you think? I am very interested in gathering some research on this and would love to hear from you!
See you all in LA next week 
August 29th, 2008 15:54
Excellent. I’ve begun setting up some virtual mentoring sessions for Industrial Designers and have capped them at 10 participants each, so this validates some of my assumptions. Gracias.