Where's the Team Spirit? An Exploratory Study on Team Development Through Co-located Tablet-Based VR

A new study from researchers at FH Salzburg and partner institutions explores how narrative-driven asymmetric VR experiences can develop teamwork-related knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs). The team designed a tablet-based VR training scenario structured around spatial separation, tool asymmetry, and interdependent tasks that force verbal coordination. The experience was built on insights from interviews with HR professionals and mapped to an established KSA framework. In a co-located user study with 16 participants across two consecutive collaborative scenarios, the researchers observed that users dynamically adapted through verbal exchange, role negotiation, and shared representations to coordinate under asymmetric conditions. Participants actively applied teamwork KSAs such as communication, coordination, trust, and reflexivity.

Based on these findings, the authors present design recommendations for creating effective immersive team training interventions. The key innovation is using tablet-based VR (rather than full headsets) to reduce barriers to entry while still delivering an immersive, spatially separated experience. The asymmetry—where each team member has different tools and information—forces reliance on verbal communication and trust, mimicking real-world team dynamics. This approach could be particularly useful for remote or hybrid teams looking to build soft skills without expensive hardware. The paper (arXiv:2605.03127) is currently under review and provides a concrete framework for designing such experiences.