Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (VAMR) fields of applications are met with the demand for innovation within the field to build the bridge between the theory of its use and our daily life. However, much of the innovation stops at conceptualising the opportunities that virtual environments offer and instead drifts back to our familiar 2D screens.

This work presents the design of interactive 3D tools for a VR-simulated office space to support tasks related to the workflow of a knowledge worker with the focus on one part of a knowledge worker’s workflow: the collection of knowledge. We propose two tools for a VR-Office environment primarily targeting the facilitation of manually acquiring and sorting research publications related to specific topics of interest.

In the process of our work, we created a unique virtual office environment offering two prototype research tools Synonym Finder and Pyramid, which aim to support a knowledge worker’s tasks. Throughout our project, we conducted a qualitative user evaluation with seven participants. Overall, we achieved excellent results with the VR prototype and received insightful feedback to improve our application.