Virfie: Virtual Group Selfie Station for Remote Togetherness

Abstract

Selfies have become a prominent means of online communication. Group selfies, in particular, encourage people to represent their identity as part of the group and foster a sense of belonging. During the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing systems are used as a tool for group selfies. However, conventional systems are not ideal for group selfies due to the rigidness of grid-based layout, information overload, and lack of eye contact. To explore design opportunities and needs for a novel virtual group selfie platform, we conducted a participatory design, and identified three characteristics of virtual group selfie scenarios, context with narratives, interactive group tasks, and capturing subtle moments.We implemented Virfie, a web-based platform that enables users to take group selfies with embodied social interaction, and to create and customize selfie scenarios using a novel JSON specification. In order to validate our design concept and identify usability issues we conducted a user study. Feedbacks from the study participants suggest that Virfie is effective at strengthening social interaction and remote togetherness.