Integrating bio-signal recording and playback for mixed reality asynchronous collaboration

When working together in asynchronous collaboration, one key aspect for collaborators is understanding co-workers’ actions. While prior actions can often be reviewed, the recording and sharing of co-workers’ bio-signal cues remain largely underexplored. In this paper, we present a Mixed Reality (MR) asynchronous collaboration system that enables workers to check their co-workers’ previous actions and physiological state. We designed several different viewing modes for workers to playback and observe their co-workers’ operations and heart rate. We conducted a user study to investigate how sharing bio-signal data between asynchronous collaborators could affect the overall user experience. We found that by showing additional physiological cues (e.g., heart rate), asynchronous collaboration could achieve a significantly stronger sense of co-presence and greater experience for the participants than sharing actions only.