I will be there for you: asynchronous social interactions in an immersive virtual museum

Asynchronous social interaction is widely present in various communication mediums since before the advent of human language. However, its manifestation and specific impact in virtual reality have not been fully defined and studied. To address this, this study conducted user research using a virtual museum as a representative social environment, comparing the effects of Language-Mediated Asynchronous Social Interaction (LASI) and Multimodal Asynchronous Social Interaction (MASI) on social presence and other experiential indicators. The results indicate that both LASI and MASI can provide a high level of social presence compared to the baseline condition without social features, with MASI providing more memorable 'spiritual moments'. The study also proposed five key design points, along with corresponding suggestions. Overall, designers of virtual reality asynchronous social systems should take full advantage of cognitive differences in different timelines, selectively replay, enhance social cues visually, provide favourable personalization options, and value anonymity.