Abstract

This bachelor thesis will investigate the customization options of digital avatars regarding the virtual personality of users. For this purpose, an extensive online survey will be designed and conducted, which will be addressed towards users of social VR applications and will evaluate their preferences for avatar customization. Evidence that matching an avatar's appearance to the users real-world appearance increases factors of presence or emotional response already exists (Waltemate et al., 2018). Now, the aim is to locate VR elements that are desirable features for the social VR community and have a positive impact on the perceived virtual personality of users avatars in VR. Therefore, external design features of the avatars (such as hair color, clothing or gender) will be extended by personality adaptations in this thesis. To do so, it will be investigated whether users of social VR (1) would like to have the possibility to customize their avatar further with respect to a certain personality, (2) in which activities they would use these virtual personality traits, and (3) if this is the case, which desires and ideas emanate from the community. Results will be evaluated, discussed, and implemented in a first prototype.