Exploring the Dynamics of Authoring Interactive VR Environments: Human Collaboration vs. AI Assistance EICS014

End-User Development (EUD) tools for Virtual Reality (VR) environments have the potential to lower the barrier to creating interactive VR applications, yet most existing tools remain single-user and provide limited support for collaboration. At the same time, recent advances in artificial intelligence raise new opportunities for supporting collaborative authoring through AI assistance. In this paper, we present Co-VREUD, a web-based EUD tool that enables the co-creation of VR environments. Co-VREUD supports real-time collaboration between two users, as well as collaboration between a human user and an AI assistant, and allows authoring from both PC- and VR-based interfaces.

We evaluated Co-VREUD in a controlled 2 × 2 between-subject study with 32 participants, comparing collaboration type (human–human vs. human–AI) and device type (PC vs. VR). Our results show that collaboration introduces additional coordination overhead without yielding overall efficiency gains. Participants consistently preferred PC-based authoring over VR-based authoring and favored collaboration with another human over collaboration with an AI assistant. Qualitative observations further revealed distinct collaboration behavior patterns during human–human collaboration.

These findings suggest that while collaborative VR EUD tools are technically feasible, they are not yet perceived as suitable alternatives to PC-based authoring, particularly for VR-based authoring. We discuss implications for the design of collaborative VR EUD systems and outline directions for future research on integrating human and AI collaborators into immersive authoring environments.