Is That You or The Machine? Translating Sociocultural Norms Across Distributed Spaces in Blended Realities

When distributed mixed reality (MR) systems map physical spaces to enable co-presence for local and remote collaborators, they can unintentionally disrupt the sociocultural norms that give actions their meaning. For instance, a participant sitting at their own desk may be rendered as occupying their collaborator’s desk, inadvertently signalling an invasion of personal space. This paper examines the design tension between spatial information and sociocultural norms through a qualitative counterfactual cards activity with 20 participants, probing how they navigate these trade-offs across different collaborative contexts. Our findings show similarities between Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) and the factors participants assess when they decide to uphold accurate spatial information or sociocultural norms during collaboration in MR. However, there were some departures from EVT, which can be used to inform the development of MR-specific theories in the future.