Development and Evaluation of a Collaborative Stock Trading Environment in Virtual Reality

Due to the proliferation of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, VR is finding new applications in various domains, such as stock trading. Here, traders invest in stocks intending to increase their profit. For this purpose, in conventional stock trading, traders usually make use of 2D applications on desktop or laptop devices. This leads to many drawbacks such as poor visibility due to limited 2D representation, complex interaction due to indirect interaction via mouse and keyboard, or restricted support for collaboration between traders. To overcome these issues, we have developed a novel collaborative, virtual environment for stock trading, which enables stock traders to view financial information and trade stocks with other collaborators. The main results of a usability study indicate that the VR environment, compared to conventional stock trading, shows no significant advantages concerning efficiency and effectiveness, however, we could observe an increased user satisfaction and better collaboration.