"Transport Me Away": Fostering Flow in Open Offices through Virtual Reality

Anastasia Ruvimova, Junhyeok Kim, Thomas Fritz, Mark Hancock, David C. Shepherd
2020 Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems  
Open offices are cost-effective and continue to be popular. However, research shows that these environments, brimming with distractions and sensory overload, frequently hamper productivity. Our research investigates the use of virtual reality (VR) to mitigate distractions in an open office setting and improve one's ability to be in flow. In a lab study, 35 participants performed visual programming tasks in four combinations of physical (open or closed office) and virtual environments (beach or
more » ... irtual office). While participants both preferred and were in flow more in a closed office without VR, in an open office, the VR environments outperformed the no VR condition in all measures of flow, performance, and preference. Especially considering the recent rapid advancements in VR, our findings illustrate the potential VR has to improve flow and satisfaction in open offices.
doi:10.1145/3313831.3376724 dblp:conf/chi/RuvimovaK0HS20 fatcat:7ktgvkjuircopnt72ky53pvpsa