Zoom cameras and movable displays enhance social telepresence

ABSTRACT

This paper shows that the augmentation of a remote person's positional movement enhances social telepresence. There are three possible ways of representing a remote person's movement toward the user in visual communication: a) the remote person's movement toward the remote camera, b) the remote camera's zooming in to enlarge the remote person's picture, and c) a forward movement of the display that is displaying the remote person. We conducted an experiment to see the relationship among these three ways and the effects of a remote camera's zooming and a display's movement on social telepresence. In the experiment, we observed that the remote person's movement lowered the reality of conversations, and the remote camera's zooming lowered the visual quality. However, social telepresence was enhanced when both the person's movement and the camera's zooming occurred simultaneously. We also observed that a 6-centimeter movement of the display enhanced social telepresence, whether the remote person moved or not.

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Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics

    • Rendering

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • Interaction paradigms

      • Web-based interaction

• Information systems

  • Information retrieval

  • Information storage systems

  • World Wide Web

    • Web applications

      • Internet communications tools

        • Web conferencing