Is social presence (alone) a general predictor for good remote collaboration? comparing video and augmented reality guidance in maintenance procedures

A common practice in scenarios of remote collaboration is to provide a representation from distributed team members, aiming to positively influence the level of social presence and in turn the work effort. Nevertheless, these stimuli can lead to fractured learning experiences, since collaborators need to split attention among the task, the shared information, and the counterpart representation. This paper explored how the last affects social presence, and other dimensions of collaboration, as well as task resolution in scenarios of remote guidance. A user study was conducted, comparing two distinct conditions: traditional video chat (team members representation always visible) and Augmented Reality (AR) annotations (collaborators representation never available). These were selected due to ongoing research with partners from the industry sector, following the insights of a participatory design process. A real-life use-case was considered, i.e., synchronous maintenance task with 4 completion stages that required a remote expert using a computer to guide 37 on-site participants wielding a handheld device. The results of the study are described and discussed based on data analysis, showing that the majority of participants preferred the AR-based condition, despite the absence of the expert representation.