# Designing a Collaborative Virtual Conference Application: Challenges, Requirements and Guidelines
## 2 Related Works
### Communicating Emotions and Non-Verbal Interaction While Online  
The current virtual conference application does not allow for the sharing of emotional awareness while communicating between local and remote participants. Previous research has shown that limited bonding capability becomes an issue, especially during remote collaboration, and the researchers of this paper would like to study the impact of collaborative teams on affective states [34]. This means that remote collaborators are not aware of other people's emotions, such as happy, sad, neutral, frustrated, excited, and more. According to [PERSON] et al. [26], the greatest challenge for the current virtual conference application is conveying emotion. Emotions may be able to provide valuable information about the relationship between collaborators, allowing them to understand each other's emotions and feelings. [PERSON] et al. [35] have suggested that, in the future, the virtual conference application will be able to synchronize members' facial expressions, as sharing facial expressions may enhance team performance. During this difficult time, many people have been using virtual conference applications for meetings, learning, and working. However, collaborators often turn off the video feed due to privacy, unstable connections, and limited data. Therefore, this research would like to understand more about the underlying issues that arise when the webam is not available, particularly during a collaborative activity.  
There is also a lack of non-verbal interaction options in the current virtual conference application. The keyboard and mouse are the main modes of interaction in the current video conference. The current virtual conference applications lack non-verbal interaction options such as hand gestures, eye gaze, and body movement [36]. A comparison revealed that non-verbal remote collaboration is better than the conventional virtual conference applications that rely solely on the mouse [37]. Participants have shown a general interest in non-verbal communication compared to only verbal communication [38]. Previous research has investigated ways to include non-verbal communication into areas such as communication behaviors, remote collaborations, and sharing cues. [PERSON] et al. [39] have developed a system that can sense and provide real-time feedback about non-verbal communication to improve communication behaviors. Non-verbal gestures can be useful in social interactions, especially in remote collaboration [7]. Therefore, this research would  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Online Apps** & **White Board** & **Hand Raise** & **Room Breakout** & **Annotate** & **Browser Based** & **Host Control** \\ \hline Zoom [27] & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & No & Yes \\ WebEx [28] & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes \\ Blackboard [29] & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes \\ Big Blue Button [30] & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes & Yes \\ Microsoft Team [31] & Yes & Yes & Yes & No & Yes & Yes \\ Google Meet [32] & Yes & Yes & No & No & Yes & No \\ Skype [33] & No & No & No & No & No & No \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: The features provided for each video conference.  
like to understand more on the underlying issues during non-verbal communication during collaborative activities.