Context: Software engineering is becoming more and more distributed. Developers and other stakeholders are often located in different locations, departments, and countries and operating within different time zones. Most online software design and modeling tools are not adequate for distributed collaboration since they do not support awareness and lack features for effective communication. Objective: The aim of our research is to support distributed software design activities in Virtual Reality (VR). Method: Using design science research methodology, we design and evaluate a tool for collaborative design in VR. We evaluate the collaboration efficiency and recall of design information when using the VR software design environment compared to a non-VR software design environment. Moreover, we collect the perceptions and preferences of users to explore the opportunities and challenges that were incurred by using the VR software design environment. Results: We find that there is no significant difference in the efficiency and recall of design information when using the VR compared to the non-VR environment. Furthermore, we find that developers are more satisfied with collaboration in VR. Conclusion: The results of our research and similar studies show that working in VR is not yet faster or more efficient than working on standard desktops. It is very important to improve the interface in VR (gestures with haptics, keyboard and voice input), as confirmed by the difference in results between the first and second evaluation.

翻译：语境：软件工程正变得越来越分布式。开发人员及其他利益相关者常分布于不同地点、部门和国家，并处于不同时区工作。多数在线软件设计与建模工具因不支持感知功能且缺乏有效沟通特性，难以满足分布式协作需求。目的：本研究旨在支持虚拟现实环境中的分布式软件设计活动。方法：采用设计科学研究方法，我们设计并评估了一款用于虚拟现实协同设计的工具。通过对比非虚拟现实软件设计环境与虚拟现实软件设计环境，评估两者在协作效率与设计信息回忆方面的差异。同时，收集用户感知与偏好，探讨虚拟现实软件设计环境带来的机遇与挑战。结果：研究发现，虚拟现实环境与非虚拟现实环境在设计信息协作效率与回忆方面无显著差异。但开发者对虚拟现实环境中协作的满意度更高。结论：本研究及类似研究表明，虚拟现实工作模式尚未比标准桌面端更快或更高效。首次与二次评估结果的差异证实，改进虚拟现实界面（如带触觉反馈的手势操作、键盘及语音输入）至关重要。