Are you looking at me? Eye contact and desktop video conferencing

ABSTRACT

Mutual gaze is an important conversational resource, but is difficult to provide using conventional video conferencing equipment due to the disparity between the position of the camera and the position of the eyes on the screen. Various elaborate inventions have been proposed to get around this problem but none have found wide use. The alternative explored here is that these expensive alternatives may be unnecessary. Users of conventional desktop video equipment may, under the right conditions, be able to learn to interpret what is at first sight inappropriate apparent gaze direction as signalling that the other person is "looking at me."Data are presented from two experiments where an estimator judges where a gazer is looking. The gazer may be looking either at the desktop video image of the estimator or some point to the side. Experiment 1 compared two image sizes and two camera positions. While the size of the image (352 × 288 pixels versus 176 × 144) had no significant effect on participants' ability to judge where the gazer was looking, horizontally offsetting the position of the camera inhibited performance. Experiment 2 examined the effect of reducing the image size further. The smallest image size (88 × 72 pixels) resulted in poorer performance than the intermediate (176 × 144). The results show that it is possible for users of low cost desktop video conferencing to learn to interpret gaze direction to a very high degree of accuracy if the equipment is configured optimally. The practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

REFERENCES

• 1: Argyle, M. and Cook, M. 1976. Gaze and Mutual Gaze. London: Cambridge University Press.
• 2: Argyle, M., Lefebvre, L. M., and Cook, M. 1974. The meaning of five patterns of gaze. Europ. J. Soc. Psych. 4, 125--136.
• 3: Bill Buxton , Tom Moran, EuroPARC's integrated interactive intermedia facility (IIIF): early experiences, Proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.4 confernece on Multi-user interfaces and applications, p.11-34, January 1990, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
• 4: Milton Chen, Leveraging the asymmetric sensitivity of eye contact for videoconference, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503386]
• 5: Clark, H. H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• 6: Cline, M. G. 1967. The perception of where a person is looking. Am. J. Psych. 80, 41--50.
• 7: Cranach, M. V. and Ellgring, J. H. 1973. The perception of looking behaviour. In M. V. Cranach and J. H. Ellgring (Eds.), Social Communication and Movement. London: Academic Press.
• 8: Duncan, S. and Niederehe, G. 1974. On signalling that it's your turn to speak. J. Exper. Soc. Psych. 10, 234--247.
• 9: Gale, C. and Monk, A. F. 2000. Where am I looking? The accuracy of video-mediated gaze awareness. Perception and Psychophysics, 62, 586--595.
• 10: Gibson, J. J. and Pick, A. D. 1963. Perception of another person's looking behaviour. American Journal of Psychology, 76, 386--394.
• 11: Grayson, D. M. 2000. The Role of Perceived Proximity in Video-Mediated Communication. University of Glasgow, Glasgow.
• 12: Ingham, R. J. 1972. Cross-cultural differences in social behaviour. Unpublished D. Phil, Oxford.
• 13: Hiroshi Ishii , Minoru Kobayashi , Jonathan Grudin, Integration of interpersonal space and shared workspace: ClearBoard design and experiments, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.11 n.4, p.349-375, Oct. 1993 [doi>10.1145/159764.159762]
• 14: Kendon, A. 1967. Some functions of gaze direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologia, 26, 22--63.
• 15: Levine, M. H. and Sutton-Smith, B. 1973. Effects of age, sex and task on visual behaviour during dyadic interaction. Develop. Psych. 9, 400--405.
• 16: Macmillan, N. A. and Creelman, C. D. 1991. Detection theory: A user's guide. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• 17: Steven McCanne , Van Jacobson, vic: a flexible framework for packet video, Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Multimedia, p.511-522, November 05-09, 1995, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/217279.215315]
• 18: Monk, A. F. and Gale, C. 2002. A look is worth a thousand words: full gaze awareness in video-mediated conversation. Discourse Processes, 33, 257--278.
• 19: Mullin, J., Anderson, A. H., Smallwood, L., Jackson, M., and Katsavras, E. 2001. Eye-tracking explorations in multimedia communications. Paper presented at the People and Computers XV, Lille.
• 20: Ken-Ichi Okada , Fumihiko Maeda , Yusuke Ichikawaa , Yutaka Matsushita, Multiparty videoconferencing at virtual social distance: MAJIC design, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.385-393, October 22-26, 1994, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/192844.193054]
• 21: Rosenthal, A. H. 1947. Two-way television communication unit. United States.
• 22: Sellen, A. J. 1995. Remote conversations: The effects of mediating talk with technology. Human-Computer Interaction, 10, 401--444.
• 23: Tanner, W. P. J. and Swets, J. A. 1954. A decision-making theory of visual detection. Psych. Rev. 61, 401--409.
• 24: Roel Vertegaal, The GAZE groupware system: mediating joint attention in multiparty communication and collaboration, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.294-301, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303065]
• 25: Roel Vertegaal , Robert Slagter , Gerrit van der Veer , Anton Nijholt, Eye gaze patterns in conversations: there is more to conversational agents than meets the eyes, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.301-308, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365119]
• 26: Leon Watts , Andrew Monk , Owen Daly-Jones, Inter-personal awareness and synchronization: assessing the value of communication technologies, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.44 n.6, p.849-873, June 1996 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1996.0036]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.4 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
Video conferencing, eye contact, gaze awareness