Exploring the effects of real-time hologram communication on social presence, novelty, and affect

With the COVID-19 social distance orders, multichannel technologies are more critical than ever for collaborating. These technologies offer psychological benefits that improve user and collaborative experiences. The main objective of this research was to explore hologram communication within a telecommunication context. This research looked to understand the effect of hologram communication on affect (i.e., emotion) and studied the relationship between holograms and social presence, and how the sense of being together may change or amplify positive messages. This paper focuses specifically on how social presence and emotional responses differ between hologram communication and video communication, such as Zoom or Google Hangouts. We used a novel hologram projection system and conducted an experiment with 98 people and found that hologram technology improved the perception of co-presence and affected two dimensions of novelty. Additionally, there were some indications of other findings that were less compelling. However, this provides further insight into the context of 3D communication for collaboration.