Supporting Metaphor Elicitation in Asymmetric Virtual Environments

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are shared virtual spaces that bring users together and allow them to interact with each other and virtual objects. In asymmetric CVEs, users have varied roles, interaction capabilities, perspectives, and device configurations, which can be leveraged to achieve user objectives. The main objective of my research is to use these asymmetric virtual environments as a means to augment people and enable them to transcend their physical, sensory and cognitive limitations (Kenyon and Leigh, 2011). Specifically, I focus on facilitating the expression and access of deeper metaphors of the mind. The two exploratory studies that I discuss in this dissertation aim to understand the usage context and evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing asymmetrical virtual environments to augment metaphor elicitation. Understanding the usage context helps to design guidelines for future systems that not only focus on the efficiency of the system individually but also consider how the system augments human capabilities (Novak et al., 2016). With this objective, this work also introduces a systematic approach for developing future systems, which integrates the insights from the two studies to improve the prototype system and the metaphor elicitation process.