Designing social immersive virtual environments for the Metaverse: The case study of MetaLibrary

Background: Over the last years, the rapid advancement of technology has led to the development of many approaches to digitalization. In this respect, the Metaverse is providing 3D, persistent virtual environments that can be used to access digital content, meet virtually, and carry out a number of professional and leisure tasks. Among the numerous technologies supporting the Metaverse, a primary role is played by immersive Virtual Reality (VR) and its ability to offer highly interactive, social experiences. Despite the growing interest in this area, there are no clear design guidelines for creating environments tailored to the Metaverse. Methods: This paper seeks to advance the research in this area by moving from the study of state of the art on the design of immersive virtual environments in the context of the Metaverse and proposing how to integrate cutting-edge technologies within this context. Specifically, best practices were identified by i) analyzing literature studies focused on human behavior in immersive virtual environments, ii) extracting common features of existing social VR platforms, and iii) performing interviews with experts of a specific application domain. More specifically, the current work considers as a case study the creation of a new virtual environment for MetaLibrary, a VR-based social platform aimed to integrate public libraries into the Metaverse. For the development of the virtual environment, several implementation challenges and additional needs were identified. These elements were considered for the selection of specific cutting-edge technologies and their integration in the development process. A user study was also carried out to investigate some design aspects (namely, lighting conditions and richness of the scene layout) for which deriving clear indications from the above analysis was not possible, since different alternative configurations could be chosen. Results: The work reported in this paper seeks to bridge the gap between existing VR platforms and related literature in the field, on the one hand, and requirements regarding immersive virtual environments for the Metaverse, on the other hand, by reporting a set of best practices which were used to build a social virtual environment that meets users’ expectations and needs. Conclusions: Results suggest that carefully designed virtual environments can positively impact user experience and interaction within the Metaverse. The insights gained with this work offer valuable cues for developing immersive virtual environments for the Metaverse able to deliver ever more effective and engaging experiences.