Design of a Desktop Virtual Reality-Based Collaborative Activities Simulator (ViRCAS) to Support Teamwork in Workplace Settings for Autistic Adults

Abstract

Autistic adults possess many skills sought by employers, but may be at a disadvantage in the workplace if social-communication differences negatively impact teamwork. We present a novel collaborative virtual reality (VR)-based activities simulator, called ViRCAS, that allows autistic and neurotypical adults to work together in a shared virtual space, offering the chance to practice teamwork and assess progress. ViRCAS has three main contributions: 1) a new collaborative teamwork skills practice platform; 2) a stakeholder-driven collaborative task set with embedded collaboration strategies; and 3) a framework for multimodal data analysis to assess skills. Our feasibility study with 12 participant pairs showed preliminary acceptance of ViRCAS, a positive impact of the collaborative tasks on supported teamwork skills practice for autistic and neurotypical individuals, and promising potential to quantitatively assess collaboration through multimodal data analysis. The current work paves the way for longitudinal studies that will assess whether the collaborative teamwork skill practice that ViRCAS provides also contributes towards improved task performance.

Prediction Models of Collaborative Behaviors in Dyadic Interactions: An Application for Inclusive Teamwork Training in Virtual Environments

“…Building on our previous work which developed a teamwork training simulator in a CVE [11], which showed acceptability in dyadic interactions between autistic and neurotypical participants, we extend our work by designing prediction models that could be used to recognize collaborative behaviors in dyadic teamwork interactions. In future work, we want to explore the impact of utilizing the predicted collaborative behaviors as an input for a real-time feedback mechanism and how that could improve collaborative interactions in dyadic interactions, specifically cross-neurotype collaboration.…”

“…We then designed the activities within the tasks based on input from stakeholders, including human resource personnel from several companies, certified behavioral analysts, career counselors, and autistic adults. They provided suggestions and feedback to encourage teamwork in a workplace environment between an autistic individual and a neurotypical (non-autistic) partner, which was discussed in detail in our previous work [11]. Multiple discussion sessions with the stakeholders were conducted to select tasks that are collaborative and include interactions that were translatable to workplace environments.…”

“…In our prior work, we developed a series of virtual collaborative tasks as a teamwork training simulator within a collaborative virtual environment (CVE), focusing on facilitating dyadic interaction [11]. While participants found the training paradigms engaging, we identified a need for real-time feedback mechanisms to support participants during these collaborative tasks.…”