Give me some room please! Personal space bubbles for safety and performance

Personal space bubbles are implemented in virtual environments to protect users from physical harassment. When activated, an impermeable boundary encloses the user completely and complicates collaborative tasks, such as passing objects or performing social gestures. When personal space protection is not balanced with functionality, the personal space bubble becomes a gilded cage. In this paper, we raise the possibility of alternate designs for personal space bubbles and test their impact on task performance within a workplace training context. Our early findings suggest that alternate bubble designs have the potential to balance safety and performance metrics such as task completion.