supporting social presence while sharing activities · web viewsome examples are tele-education,...

Enhancing Social Presence by Connecting Consumer Electronic Devices

The Effect of Awareness Information on Social Presence and Group Attraction

C.A.G.J. Huijnen, MSc

Final project of the User System Interaction Program

Confidential document

ISBN 90-444-0229-3

Supervisors: Boris de Ruyter (Philips Research Eindhoven)Panos Markopoulos (Technical University Eindhoven)Wijnand Ijsselsteijn (Technical University Eindhoven)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of contents_________________________________________________________________2

Index of tables:__________________________________________________________________3

Index of figures__________________________________________________________________3

Acknowlegdements_______________________________________________________________4

General Summary________________________________________________________________5

Management summary____________________________________________________________6

1. Introduction_________________________________________________________________7

2. Project Assignment Description_________________________________________________8

3. Problem Definition___________________________________________________________9

4. Literature Study_____________________________________________________________11

4.1 Computer Mediated Communication__________________________________________11Context in project____________________________________________________________14

4.2 Social Presence___________________________________________________________15

4.3 Group Attraction__________________________________________________________16

4.4 The Home Environment____________________________________________________17

4.5 The Experience of Watching TV______________________________________________17

4.6 Ambient Intelligence_______________________________________________________18

5. Related Work_______________________________________________________________20

6. Use of requirements concerning the different domains______________________________21The road to the visualization___________________________________________________21Some ideas for visualizations___________________________________________________22Controlling the level of presence________________________________________________23

7. Experimental Design_________________________________________________________24Problem statement___________________________________________________________24

7.1 Description of the Experiment_______________________________________________25Setting_____________________________________________________________________25Participants_________________________________________________________________25Conditions__________________________________________________________________25Independent variable_________________________________________________________26Dependent variables__________________________________________________________26

7.2 Pilot Tests________________________________________________________________27Pilot 1: ‘perception of activity’__________________________________________________27Pilot 2: ‘level of activity’______________________________________________________27

8. Descriptive Information______________________________________________________28

9. Results____________________________________________________________________33

10. Discussion_______________________________________________________________39

11. Conclusions______________________________________________________________41

11.1 Recommendations_________________________________________________________41

12. References_______________________________________________________________42

13. Appendices:______________________________________________________________44

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1. Appendix Research questions Generated at first phase of project_________________45

2. Appendix additional figures or tables of the descriptive study____________________48

3. Appendix Questionnaires___________________________________________________49

INDEX OF TABLES:Table 1. General research domains considered__________________________________________9Table 2. Specific research domains considered________________________________________10Table 3. Activities in the home interesting to enhance social presence_______________________10Table 4. Media and Common ground. Table in Preece, Adapted from Clark & Brennan, 1993 by Preece 2000 Italics added by Preece.________________________________________________14Table 5. Advantages and disadvantages of two visualizations (sketch and full video)_______32

INDEX OF FIGURESFigure 1. Different domains in Presence..........................................................................................15Figure 2. Korean fans during the World Championship 2002..........................................................18Figure 3. Design of Experiment........................................................................................................25Figure 4. Sketch-like visualization....................................................................................................26Figure 5. The amounts of hours the participants watch television per day......................................28Figure 6. With how many other persons do people watch TV?...............................................................28Figure 7. Drivers for people to watch TV together with other person.............................................29Figure 8. Comparison of programs people prefer to watch alone versus in presence of others......29Figure 9. Comparison of current communication and desired communication while watching TV..........30Figure 10. Important aspect about other persons...........................................................................31Figure 11. Results about Social Presence experience.......................................................................33Figure 12. Results for Social Presence of medium............................................................................33Figure 13. Results for condition on group attraction........................................................................34Figure 14. Results for fascinating interaction...................................................................................35Figure 15. Results for "the feeling of being watched".......................................................................35Figure 16. Results for "do you want to use the system at home?"....................................................36Figure 17. Results for negative distraction of visualization..............................................................36Figure 18. Attention people devote to the TV....................................................................................37Figure 19. Additional question; single viewer feels left out?...........................................................37Figure 20. Additional question; single viewer feels alone?..............................................................38Figure 21. Additional question; single viewer belonged to group?................................................38Figure 22. Number of persons who did and did not see the game..........................................................48Figure 23. Result of match known by number of people......................................................................48

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ACKNOWLEGDEMENTSThis report discusses the work done during my final project of the post-graduate program User-System Interaction. The project was carried out in the Media Interaction Group at Philips Research Eindhoven. This group works on very interesting projects and the atmosphere is great. Hereby I would like to thank the members of the group for their fruitful discussions and support they gave me during the 9 months I joined them. Especially, I would like to thank my supervisors; Boris de Ruyter (Philips Research), Panos Markopoulos and Wijnand Ijsselsteijn (both from Technical University Eindhoven). All three helped me to achieve my goals in this project in their supporting and involving way. Thank you for your devotion and time; I learned a lot these nine months, and I enjoyed working with you.

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GENERAL SUMMARYThis project is conducted as a final project for the User-System-Interaction program of the Stan Ackermans Institute. The project is carried out for Philips Research in Eindhoven in the Intelligent User Interfaces cluster of the Media Interaction Group.

The goal of the project is to gain more knowledge about developing social interactions in computer-mediated settings. Technology is often used in office- or work settings where communication or interaction between people and groups are supported by means of different media and applications. Email, videoconferencing and collaborative applications all support the users in their communicative tasks. Research and evaluation of these systems is usually focused on usability aspects like learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. Fairly little work has been done to support or enhance the interactions and experiences of people in the home environment. Clearly this is a different context where different aspects have to be considered and different usability criteria play a role. People have different goals and needs in the home domain.

As connectivity between devices in (different) environments increases, the nature of social interaction between people changes. Computers will more and more become enablers for social interaction. In this context it is important to think about the goals and effects of introducing technology as a social mediator. Systematic research is needed to examine what the effects are of introducing communication technology in connected homes. How to deal with privacy issues? How to enable people to preserve and express their identity in the interaction? How to deal with multi-user situations? Many of these kinds of issues arise when developing interactive systems in this area.

Focusing on the home environment, we selected a few important concepts and focus on the one that we believe is able to provide people with benefits concerning the interaction with other people while sharing activities. In the current project we are specifically interested in the concept of social presence that is the feeling of being socially together. Despite the range of communication technologies available today, it is felt that people on different locations have a need to stay in touch and share activities. In this project we explore the effect of providing people with different amounts of visual information while they are watching the same football match on TV with a friend on another location. Is there a difference in the level of social presence they experience depending on the amount of information they receive? Is there a relationship between the level of presence and the group attraction people experience? Do people feel more part of the group when they receive more information about the others? Is there a difference in the experience of social presence and group attraction between the people who are alone versus part of a group? These are the main questions we would like to answer in this study.

In order to answer these questions an experiment is conducted in a home environment. Participants are 12 groups of 3 friends who are watching a match simultaneously from different locations. Different visualizations (varying in the amount of information they display) are shown during the match in order to be able to measure possible differences in social presence and group attraction. People are placed in different viewing conditions (single versus in a group of 2 friends) in order to assess whether levels of social presence and group attraction depend on the viewing condition.

This kind of research is needed to gain more knowledge about the effect of technology on the social interaction between people.

This project is supervised by: Boris de Ruyter (Philips Research), Panos Markopoulos and Wijnand IJsselsteijn (Technical University Eindhoven).

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MANAGEMENT SUMMARYThis paragraph provides a summary of the experiment that is conducted and the main results.

The goal of this project is to gain knowledge about effects of technology on social interaction between people. Specifically we are interested in the concept of social presence, i.e. the feeling of being socially together. By means of displaying different visualisations (varying in the amount of information they convey about the interaction partner) we try to increase the experience of social presence while friends are watching a football game from different locations. Different conditions concerning the amount of information that is displayed can be distinguished. Firstly, a control condition where people do not receive any information about the remote friend(s) while they are watching the game. Secondly, a sketchy visualisation condition where a silhouette like image (based on movement) is displayed above the TV screen people are watching. Thirdly, a full video visualisation is shown above the screen. Here people see the other in more detail, a live video (no audio). Two friends are watching the game in one room, an other friend watches the game at another location. In addition to social presence, we study an interesting from social psychology; group attraction. Group attraction refers to the desire of an individual to identify with and with an accepted member of the group. We are interested in the effects of showing different amounts of information about the interaction partner on social presence and group attraction. Is there a difference in the level of social presence depending on the visualisation that is used? Is there an effect of condition on group attraction? Is there a difference between the experience of social presence and group attraction for the different kind of viewers?

Results indicate that there is an effect of condition on both social presence and group attraction in favour of the full video visualisation. In this condition the single viewer feels socially together with the remote group despite the physical distance. For the group viewers this holds as well; they feel socially together with the single viewer in the full visualisation. People find the full visualisation a richer medium than the sketchy visualisation. A richer medium is for example warmer, emotional, friendlier, and more personal for example. The experience of social presence that people had during the full visualisation was higher: they had for example the impression they were sharing an activity, having a meeting, and receiving enough information about the other.

Moreover, both the single and group viewer is more attracted to the group in the full visualisation condition. When using the richer medium, they identify more with the group and feel a more accepted member of the group. The sketch visualisation is not able to enhance neither social presence nor group attraction. There is no difference in the experience of social presence between the kinds of viewers. In terms of social presence and group attraction, people benefit from richer communication technologies when communicating at distances. People who are communicating with a group of persons at a distance feel more part of the group when richer communication media are used. The group viewers considered the single persons as more part of the group as well.

The interaction with the full visualization is more fascinating than the sketch visualization. The full visualization is preferred over the sketchy. People prefer to see the other in a detailed way; they want to see what the other is doing and how he is reacting on certain moments. Moreover, people expressed that they would benefit of adding sound to the full video visualization. Expectations based on literature would be that social presence would increase when audio is added. People consider watching television as a social activity; sharing ideas or opinions through sound are important.

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1. INTRODUCTIONAs connectivity becomes more part of our lives and of our daily use of electronic devices, we can expect that network infrastructures will become enablers for social interactions. Often the value of connectivity is interpreted as high for the distribution of content. While today’s focus is on access to content, we should anticipate the role of networking technology in the function of human-to-human interactions. Although applications such as chatting via Internet and SMS via mobile phones exist, there is more to system-mediated communication. Another, fairly unexplored application is the sharing of activities through networked devices. In order for these applications to have value for the users it is important that research identifies what attracts people in using such applications. For applications where the sharing of activities is central, we believe social presence will be a main driver for people. Social presence refers to “the sense of being together (and communicating) with someone”. Social presence is the focus of attention in our research; social presence (especially the part of ‘the sense of being together”) and other related research areas are addressed. The next paragraph describes the project assignment, which will be followed by a problem definition. In that paragraph the problem is described and different research domains considered that lead to the topic of social presence are discussed. After deciding that social presence is an interesting topic, a literature study is done. Paragraph 4 provides an outline of different domains that are important here (like, computer mediated communication, social presence, group attraction, the home environment, the experience of watching television, and finally a paragraph on ambient intelligence). After studying the literature, paragraph 5 deals with related work. Paragraph 6 gives a description of the use of requirements for this project concerning the different domains. The 7th paragraph gives a description of the experimental design that is used in the study. The focus of this project is to examine the effects of the amount of information on social presence and group attraction. Then paragraph 8 discusses descriptive information that is elicited from the participants. The results of the main experiment are described in paragraph 9. In the 10th paragraph the results are discussed. Finally, conclusions can be drawn as recommendations are given in paragraph 11.

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2. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTIONThe first description of the project assignment was stated very generally: to gain knowledge about the social interactions in system mediated settings. When technology is brought to people’s environments there is a risk that not only the tasks of the users with this technology change, but the interactions between other persons changes as well. Of course an overview of the context is needed in order to say something about the effects that technology can have. Depending on the design and use of systems, they may promote or inhibit our social relationships. Information technologies are playing a large role in human social lives; therefore it is important that we gain more knowledge about the consequences of introducing technology into our environments. No longer computers are solely being used for performing certain tasks; they are enabling us as well to communicate with others and the computer is moving slowly into people’s social environment.

To achieve more systematic knowledge about the effects that systems can have on people’s social interaction, controlled experiments have to be done. Experiments can be done to get more insight in emerging behaviour when interacting with systems, to gain knowledge on how to avoid users being frustrated by systems, to know how to design systems that are sensitive to user’s needs, to get inspiration for new ideas for applications. Designing systems for people requires knowledge about the tasks people have to achieve, the context people work/live in, and the interactions people have with persons and/or devices in their environment. In this project an experiment is done to investigate social interaction in/between home environments. The next paragraph discusses the problem definition.

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3. PROBLEM DEFINITIONThe first step in the project was to identify interesting research issues relevant to system mediated communication. A number of ‘requirements’ related to the focus of the project were set during the first exploration:

The context is the home environment. The home environment is a very complex setting, where complicated behaviors take place and emerge. When bringing technology into the home environment it can be that behavior is changed or different behavior emerges. Clearly, in the home some activities are more common/suited than others. The home, for example, is a place to relax and share time with family or friends. As a consequence, the activity/need that technology has to support/fulfill is limited to certain behaviors.

The interaction that is about to take place has to be an interaction between houses, not within one house. The technology should enable interaction between people at different locations.

The users we are dealing with were friends/family/acquaintances, which is a logical consequence of the first requirement that deals with the home environments. A home is not a place were lots of strangers meet obviously. People know the people in the other houses as well. People know the persons in the other houses they are interacting with. As a result the setting is rather informal, both within and between the houses.

On the basis on these requirements the following topics were considered as interesting.

Table 1. General research domains considered

Many of these topics are difficult to test in the duration of the project. For example, when you consider the family rituals, a thorough investigation of the family structure and more longer term testing is needed in order to achieve valuable results. Other topics were very interesting from a research perspective, yet not so fruitful and suited to the Philips target group/vision/strategy. The next table deals with research topics that we focused on more specifically. The focus is on social presence in this project. The generation of topics and questions was done in an iterative way, and devoting a central place to the user. His desires, abilities, goals/tasks and context were kept in mind continuously.Theorists from different research fields are working on presence (which can be divided into physical presence, social presence and co-presence) and apply the concept to different domains. Some examples are tele-education, entertainment, medicine, and communication. Social presence is the topic that was chosen. Social presence can be defined as ‘the feeling of being socially together (and communicating with each other) (IJsselsteijn, 2001). Social presence will be discussed in more detail in paragraph 4.2. It is believed that social presence can enhance experiences of people in the home environment: people want to share activities; they want to be together with their families and friends. When we can use technology in such a way that we are able to provide people with the feeling of being together, we believe this is an added value for the users. Social presence is a broad concept, and received a lot of attention recently. Many theorists are working on different aspects and use their own definitions and constructs. Because of the possible social use of social presence, it seems like a valuable concept in the home environment as well. The table below shows some examples of other research topics or questions that were considered. Additional research question generated during the project can be found in appendix 1.

Research domains considered

General

CooperationFamily ritualsRole differentiationPower allocationAffectionInformation sharingFamily rulesConflict resolution/ avoidanceSupportive behaviourInitiativeCommitment DominanceTrust

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Research domains Examples of research questions/topics

Speci f ic

Ambient culture

What are the core values/aspects of the “family culture”? How can technology allow for representing different identities? What information do we need of people in order to adapt to their

behaviour/goals? How to respond in the case of multi user situations with conflicting desires? How can we enhance the ‘group or family culture’ experience?

Control How much control do people want/need themselves and how much do they give to technology in different situations?

Privacy What information do people want to share with others and how? How to inform people about the usage of data about them/their behaviour?

What is acceptable for people?Anonymity What is the effect of anonymity on a person’s identity/behaviour?

Social presence

Is the level of presence people like to ‘receive’ equal to the level of presence like to ‘give’?

Is there a relation between the level of presence and group attraction?Table 2. Specific research domains considered

Social presence was found to be an interesting topic because of several reasons. More and more technology is possible to connect people at different locations. For Philips, connecting people is a valuable business concept. People belong to groups and they want to be together, despite of distances between them. After deciding that social presence is an interesting topic, the next step was to identify the activities that would be interesting to enhance social presence in the home. This was done on an iterative basis of reading literature and thinking about the home setting. The table below shows some of these activities.

Table 3. Activities in the home interesting to enhance social presence

Watching television is written in red; the focus is on this activity in this project. In this project we are focussed interacting within and between homes, we are interested to study the effects of enhancing social presence in the home while friends are watching TV. Watching television can be seen as a social activity where people engage in together with others, especially in the home environment. Literature has not yet shown many applications around the social aspects of watching television together. A more detailed study into social psychology was needed to identify interesting concepts in the context of the project. More knowledge was needed about the different domains involved and a literature study was done. Paragraph 4 addresses some of these domains.

Home activities for which it may be interesting to enhance social presence

Watching TV (sport, show, contest)

Having dinner togetherWaking upDressingCookingTaking care of each otherListening musicHaving discussionsPlaying games togetherPersonal assistanceSinging/karaokeHaving ‘access’ to each other

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4. LITERATURE STUDYIn order to be able to generate valuable research questions a thorough understanding of the different domains that are of interest to this project is needed. In the following paragraphs, different domains are discussed that are important or related to this project.

4.1 COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATIONThe phrase "computer-mediated communication" is an umbrella expression that evolved from a practical necessity to capture a large group of technologies that depend upon computer technology to facilitate communication. For example, communication technologies such as audio teleconferencing, video conferencing, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), voice mail or even a fax interaction could be considered to be CMC because all use computer-driven networks. In CMC digital techniques are used to create and transmit asynchronous and synchronous messages. Important aspects of CMC are synchronicity and information richness:

Synchronicity is the relation according to time. Asynchronous communication is communication in which messages are exchanged during different time intervals. For example, e-mail is an asynchronous type of CMC because two people do not have to sit at the computer at the same time to be able to communicate. Synchronous Communication on the other hand, is communication in which messages are exchanged during the same time interval. For example, instant messaging is a type of CMC in which the participants must be at the computer at the same time.

Information Richness; according to various theorists, communication media have different capacities to reduce uncertainty in relationships. For example, face-to- face (FtF) communication is considered to be the "richest" medium because of the number of information channels (i.e. visual, auditory, olfactory) that reduce the uncertainty in the communication. In contrast, CMC is less "rich" because there is most often only one information channel (text).

The use of computer-mediated communication is increasing rapidly. People engage in all sorts of interaction via CMC. Communities so far have been determined by time and space. People gather and interact on the same time at the same place. Virtual environments are creating a new kind of space for people to gather. People are now able to interact with each other at different locations, a new ‘interaction space’ is created for them. A variety of behaviours in virtual communities can be identified, e.g. conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, emotional contact, play games, talk/chat, exchange objects. In sum, there is a variety of social interaction behaviours in CMC.

The communication medium that is best suited depends on the type of communication that is needed. For communication, for example, of basic factual information, such as a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers, low-bandwidth systems are adequate (Sellen, 1994). Researchers working on computer-mediated communication in business reported that consensus building using textual systems is less effective than in face-to-face meetings (e.g. Sproull & Kiesler, 1991 in Preece, 2000). Similar reports came from education, which led to the assumption that textual CMC systems support communication poorly, particularly socioemotional communication. The advantage of broadband video conferencing is that it more closely resembles face-to-face communication than email, lists servers, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and bulletin boards. In the case of video conferencing, voice tone, gestures, body language, and contextual information are communicated. However, because of the high demand for bandwidth, it is expensive and networks are needed to provide sufficient bandwidth. Two related theories that help to explain these observations are ‘social presence theory’ (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) and ‘media richness theory” (Draft & Lengel, 1986). The social presence theory and media richness theory, are based on the premise that media have different capacities to carry interpersonal communicative acts (IJsselsteijn et al, 2001). Theorists talk about a continuum in the array of available audiovisual communication media ranging from face-to-face interactions at the rich, more social end and written communication at the less rich, less social end. Studies have been carried out in the context of rich audio and broadband video communication. In most cases the results indicated that richer media were better able to create feelings of social presence.

Social presence theory (Short et al., 1976) addresses how successfully media convey a sense of the participants being in physical proximity, using face-to-face communication as the benchmark for the assessment. It is not needed to feel physically located at another location, however, the sense of ‘as if they were together’ is important. Social presence depends not only on the words people speak but also on nonverbal cues, body language, and context (Rice, 1987 a). Reduced social cues (i.e. gestures, body language, facial expression, appearance, and so on) are caused by low bandwidth (Walther, 1993), and

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inadequate technological support for aspects such as gaze tracking or multi-person conferencing, which affects communication.

Media richness theory is similar to social presence but takes a media perspective (Draft & Lengel, 1986). It describes the media’s capacity for immediate feedback-how well it conveys cues, and how many and in which ways the senses are involved. Richness of a medium is measured by its capacity for immediate feedback, multiple cues, language variety, and personalization. The media richness theory states that task performance will be improved when task needs are matched to a medium’s ability to convey information.

The consequences of filtering out social, emotional and contextual information vary depending on their importance to the communication task. There are three main ways that this affects communication (Preece, 2000). First, signals needed to understand conversation may be missing (e.g. nodding the head). Second, conversations proceed by speakers taking turns; various signals such as pauses in speech or gaze are used to indicate the other speaker to take turn. Third, seeing and hearing the speaker enables the listener to infer information regarding the context of the conversation and the speaker’s feelings.

Reduced social cues can encourage unusual behaviour that would not occur if people could see each other. Some people feel comfortable behaving aggressively online because they are hidden behind a veil of anonymity (Preece, 2000). The way participants form impressions of each other and how much personal information they are prepared to disclose are also influenced. In addition, with fewer social cues to monitor, some people find it easier, even fun, to assume different persona or even switch gender (Preece, 2000). These effects are interrelated in complex ways; yet these can play an important role for the success of building social presence environments. Separating them is not straightforward.

Common-ground theory is a third interesting theory. It can be used as a framework for determining how two or more people communicate that they understand each other. It focuses on how the communication process and content are coordinated. Much of this coordination depends upon social presence or appropriate ways of compensating for its absence. The developers of the theory (Herb Clark and Susan Brennan) argue:

“ It takes two people working together to play a duet, shake hands, play chess, waltz, teach, or make love. To succeed, the two of them have to coordinate both the content and the process of what they are doing… They cannot even begin to coordinate on content without assuming a vast amount of shared information or common ground – that is, mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions. … to coordinate on process, they need to update their common ground moment by moment.”All collective actions are built on common ground and its accumulation (Clark & Brennan, 1993, in Preece, 2000). Generally, people are trying to achieve this common ground unconsciously, with as little effort as possible. This is where media are important. The amount and type of effort varies depending on the communication medium. For example, a nod may work in a face-to-face conversation, but not over the phone. Different media offer different opportunities, as the following list indicates (in Preece, 2000; Clark & Brennan, 1993):

Co-presence: A and B share the same physical environment, as in face-to-face conversation.

Visibility: A and B are visible to each other, as in face-to-face communication and video conferencing. Being able to ‘read each other’s body language is very important for communicating emotion. Developers provide emoticons and other techniques to compensate the lack of visibility in textual systems.

Co temporality: B receives at roughly the same time as A presents, so the message is received immediately.

Simultaneity: A and B can send and receive at once and simultaneously. Sequentially: A’s and B’s turns cannot get out of sequence as in asynchronous

communication. In asynchronous communication, periods of several seconds, minutes, hours, or days, may pass between a message being sent and a response being generated.

Reviewability: B can review A’s message. For example, text messages can be reviewed, whereas spoken messages cannot and are lost when the speaker stops speaking.

Revisibility: A can revise messages for B. If messages persist, they can be revised-providing they can be accessed.

If one of these opportunities is not present, and the communication is constrained by its absence, ways of overcoming or dealing with it have to be found (Preece, 2000). However, in some circumstances a disadvantage can turn out not to be so bad after all, and there is no problem despite the fact that some possibilities are absent. For example, the delay between receiving a message via asynchronous textual

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conferencing and sending a reply can provide valuable time for reflection. Table 4 provides an outline of the communication opportunities offered by different types of media/systems, and describes their advantages and disadvantages. These media are examined on their terms of common ground, which originally was developed to explain face-to-face communication in relation of CMC. Interestingly, face-to-face lacks some possibilities offered by other media. Face-to-face interaction is not necessarily the best medium for all purposes. For example, it is difficult to review a face-to-face conversation, and there may be little time to reflect, whereas a text-based interchange is a much better medium for reviewing and reflecting. There is no medium that is suited for all tasks and environments, so none of the described media can be considered ‘best’; different attributes are better for various communication tasks in specific contexts (Rice, 1987a).

Medium Possibilities Comments

Face-to-face

Co-presence, visibility, audibility, co temporality, simultaneity, sequentiality

It can be difficult to delay response to reflect. Moreover, people may communicate certain messages or feelings unintentionally via body language. An awkward glance, for example, may communicate a lack of agreement despite the words being spoken.

TelephoneAudibility, cotemporality, simultaneity, sequentiality

No opportunity to ‘read’ body language and thereby limiting socio-emotional communication. Voice tone can be a means to convey socio-emotional messages. The phone works well for conveying factual information.

Video conferencing

Visibility, audibility, cotemporality, simultaneity, sequentiality (in some systems)

Response capability of technology can inversely influence synchrony and impede turn-taking. Reception of messages may be slow; delay may cause misunderstandings. Limited screens (size and quality) makes seeing body language and other cues difficult to perceive. High bandwidth is needed to prevent a frustrating experience.

Terminal tele-conference (textual)

Cotemporality, sequentiality, revieability

Production takes more time, but there is control over timing. Having time to reflect can be very useful, because understanding message content is often heightened. Emotional understanding, however, may suffer from poor social presence; developers need to seek ways to find solutions to this problem.

Answering machines

Audibility, reviewability

Receiving only. There is no feedback whether the other persons received the message. Social presence is limited.

Electronic mail Reviewability, revisabililty

Production takes more time, though control gives time to reflect. Turn-taking is often delayed, but understanding of verbal messages is often better; however, emotional understanding can suffer from poor social presence. Alternatives are needed to make up for absence of body language transmission for supporting socio-emotional and contextual communication.

Letters Reviewability, revisability

Very slow turn taking. Generally the effect is adverse, though understanding may be improved by reflection time.

Bulletin boardsReviewability, revisability, sequentiality

Production takes time, though macro control offers time to reflect. Verbal messages are often better understood. Threading helps delineate among speakers. Socio-emotional communication is often supported by use of icons.

Chats Cotemporality, simultaneity

Often very fast moving, which prohibits long messages. Turn-taking is often chaotic, as there is no time for delay or fault correction. This format can be difficult for poor or slow typists.

MOO’s text only

Cotemporality, simultaneity

Learning curve prohibits casual participation. Response time depends on number of participants. Ways of displaying emotion are well developed in some systems.

MOO’s & MUDs-graphical, with


As above; but sense of social presence is aided by avatar and graphical world of community action.

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avatarsComputer virtual environments


Requires high bandwidth. Strong sense of co-presence with intention of improving communication.

Table 4. Media and Common ground. Table in Preece, Adapted from Clark & Brennan, 1993 by Preece 2000 Italics added by Preece.

Context in projectDepending on the context and tasks/behavior of the people, it is possible that a less rich medium can better fulfill the person’s needs. In this project, the setting can be described as follows:

It is Friday evening, 20.00 o’clock. Bob, John and Max have gathered at Bob’s. Tonight it is going to happen; the important football match is about to take place, and they are going to enjoy it together. They are sitting on a couch in the living room in front of the tube.

300 kilometers up north in a living room, Eric is sitting alone on his couch. He is thinking about his friends who are going to watch the same match together. If only he lived closer, then he would join them as well.

This scenario describes the problem that we like to tackle in this project. We want to enhance social presence for people while they are sharing an activity (of watching a match on TV) despite a physical distance between them. In other words, we would like to give Bob, John, Max and Eric the feeling that they are socially together, watching this football match, although they are at different locations.

With respect to the characteristics described by Preece, the following discussion can be given related to this project:

Important aspects of the context itself:

They are watching a football game on television. Clearly, it is important that they see and hear what is going on in the game. When a match is broadcasted, there is a commentator who provides auditory cues and information about the match. In this context we decided not to provide an option that they can hear each other, because of the experiment set-up. In previous studies, audio was added to visual conditions and it appeared that there was an effect of audio on social presence. In this experiment we did not include audio because we assumed it would correlate positively with social presence, and we were more interested in providing more levels of visual information.

The interaction may not ask too much attention, yet should give the people a sense of what is going on at the other side.

The interaction should be a very light weighted one, in the sense that people do not have to put a lot of conscious effort to interact with the system that enables them to stay aware of the others. People are watching television at home, and are not interested in a very elaborated interaction with a device.

Discussion of the aspects of the interaction (of Preece, 2000) between the two locations:The first four aspects are important in this context.

1. Visibility: the different persons at the both locations have to see the activities of each other. How clearly and precise this is needed is one of the research questions of this project. It can be that less information about each other is preferred, however it can be the case as well that people show more interest in a full video mode.

2. Co temporality: it is important that the things that happen are simultaneously present for group A as they are for group B. This is important to achieve a sense of social presence. People are sharing an activity at the same time, so the delay between different actions or reactions must be short.

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3. Simultaneity: both groups of people can interact with the system simultaneously. The system monitors and displays the activity simultaneously on both sides.

4. Sequentially: both group A and B can act or react whenever they want. The system is synchronous, so they do not have to wait for each other in order to interact. Changes of both sides will be processed and displayed simultaneously.

The following aspects of interaction are considered less important in the context for the scenario that this project focuses upon:

1. Co-presence is not important in this setting. People are watching the match from different locations and it is not important that they really have the feeling that they are physically a shared location.

2. Reviewability: this is not important in this setting; there is no need to review actions.

3. Revisibility: this is not important in this setting. The interaction is needed at the time of the game, after that it is not an issue anymore.

In the next paragraph social presence will be given more attention to.

4.2 SOCIAL PRESENCE The concept of presence is used differently by different theorists, each looking at the concept from their own perspective and applying their own emphasis and definitions. As a matter of fact, the defining characteristics of the concept itself are still under discussion (IJsselsteijn, Freeman & de Ridder, 2001). Lombard and Ditton (1997) reviewed a substantial part of presence literature and distinguished six different but interrelated conceptualisations of presence; presence as social richness, presence as realism, presence as transportation, presence as immersion, presence as social actor within medium, and presence as medium as social actor. The six conceptualisations can be grouped in two broad categories, physical and social presence (Freeman, 1999). Physical presence refers to the sense of physically being located somewhere, ‘being there’ in a mediated environment. Here people are often situated in virtual environments and equipped with additional devices like head mounted displays in order to increase the sensation of being somewhere else. Social presence, on the other hand, can be defined as ‘the sense of being together’ (and communicating) with someone (IJselsteijn, de Ridder, Freeman & Avons, 2000). Here the focus is not on the sensation of being in another mediated location. However, it is important that people feel that they are interacting with another person. At the intersection of these two categories, ‘co-presence’ can be identified (IJsselsteijn et al., 2001). This refers to a sense of being together in a shared space, combining characteristics of both physical and social presence.

Figure 1. Different domains in Presence

In this research the attention will be on social presence: the feeling of socially being together (and communicating) with each other (IJsselsteijn et al 2001). In face-to-face interactions a lot of attention is devoted to non-verbal aspects of the communication. The nonverbal behaviour of people communicates meaningful information. It is argued that interpersonal intimacy in an interaction is kept at an optimal, equilibrium level through factors as physical distance, smiling, eye contact, and personal topics of conversation (Argyle & Dean, 1965). Other added intimacy factors as gestures, touching, vocal cues (e.g. the tone of voice), turn-taking behaviour in dialogues (e.g. the frequency of interruptions), the use of space (e.g. moving towards someone), and verbal expressions directly acknowledging the communicative partner (e.g. “how did you do that” or “what do you mean?”). Wiener and Mehrabian (1968) have applied this concept of immediacy (i.e. the psychological distance a speaker puts between him and the hearer), to an understanding of speech. They showed that the choice of ‘we ..’ as opposed to ‘I ..’ or ‘you..’ imply a feeling of closeness and association. Thus, intimacy and immediacy behaviours seem to be particularly relevant for social presence (de Greef & IJsselsteijn, 2001).

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Physical Presence

Social Presence

Co- Presence

Festinger et al (1950) found that there is a strong relationship between physical closeness and the formation of friendships; the costs of maintaining the separating distance could be more that the psychic rewards that the relationship would bring. However, telecommunications could be a great destroyer of distance, allowing people to maintain their contacts with others independent of the distances between them. Social presence applications might be a possible bridge between two or more different locations.

Different studies address different aspects of social presence. A number of studies focus on the determinants of presence, some others focus on measurements. This research deals with the consequences and the nature of presence in the context of the home. People share activities in the home, and contact people who are not at the same location as they are. People are part of many groups they interact with. In general a distinction can be made between two types of groups; primary and secondary (or complex) groups (Cooley, 1909 in Forsyth, 1999). Primary groups are small, close-knit groups such as families, friendship cliques, children’s playgroups, emotionally close peers and neighbourhoods. They are characterised by face-to-face interaction, interdependency, and strong group identification. According to Cooley primary groups are “fundamental in forming the social nature and ideas of the individual”. Secondary groups, on the other hand, “are larger and more formally organised and tend to be shorter in duration and less emotionally involving than primary groups.” Members of secondary groups do not necessarily interact directly with each other or know one another; the connections are formal and impersonal (e.g. professional associations, business teams, religious groups). Home studies showed that people desire more kind of connections to family and close friends (Hindus, Mainwaring, Leduc, Hagström, Bayley, 2001). It is possible that members of these kinds of groups are distributed over different locations. With systems that are capable to connect different members of the group we might be able to enhance social presence. The next paragraph discusses an interesting construct in this context, namely group attraction.

4.3 GROUP ATTRACTIONCohesiveness is the descriptive and technical term used by psychologists to refer to the important property of social groups that is captured in common usage by a wider range of terms like solidarity, cohesion, comradeship, team spirit, group atmosphere, unity, ‘one-ness’, ‘we-ness’, ‘groupness’ and beloningness (Hogg, 1992). Communication of cohesive groups is better, less inhibited and more frequent. Moreover, satisfaction of group members is higher in cohesive groups.

In the context of cohesiveness, Hogg makes a distinction between personal and group level attraction. In the case of personal attraction, persons are seen as unique beings and the attraction is based on interpersonal processes. He argues that while members of cohesive groups usually like each other, this personal attraction is not group cohesion. Rather, group cohesion corresponds to social attraction; a liking of other group members that is based on their status as typical group members. Unlike personal attraction, which is grounded on personal relationships between the members, social attraction is depersonalised. It reflects the tendency to admire individuals who possess the kind of qualities that are typical for our group. Depersonalised perception based on prototypically (norm, stereotype) generated by categorization is the underlying mechanism of social attraction.

The level of a group member’s attraction to his/her group contributes to a number of important group outcomes. Members who find their groups attractive are more likely to remain members of the group and to attend gatherings regularly (Sagi, Olmstead & Atelsek, 1955). Members who are attracted to their groups also seem more willing to contribute to group discussion and self-exploration. Group attraction can be defined as an individual’s desire to identify with and be an accepted member of the group (Evans & Jarvis, 1986). Attraction to a group can be measured by means of the Group Attitude Scale (GAS). The GAS is a questionnaire that is applicable to a broad range of groups. The purpose of the Group Attitude Scale is to measure members’ feelings about a group rather than their behaviour in the group. Every individual is asked to fill in the questionnaire according to his/her opinion. Group attraction is measured by identifying the individual scores, whereas cohesiveness is often treated as the sum of the individual members’ levels of attraction-to-group. In this research we are interested in the individual ratings of group attraction. We are interested if people’s desires to identify with and be an accepted member of the group (group attraction) relates to social presence. When people feel more socially together, does this influence the group attraction? Do the media allow the remote participant to feel part of the group?

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4.4 THE HOME ENVIRONMENTDesigning technology for the home is different than technology that is used for the workplace. System-mediated interaction is often used in office/work settings where (secondary) groups are supported by means of collaborative applications, email or video conferencing for example. Clearly, primary groups are different in nature from secondary groups. Relatively little work has been done to support or enhance the interactions and experiences in the home environment with help of technology. For a discussion on this issue see Sawhney & Gomez (2000); they state that there has been a lack of published research or studies in the context of patterns of communication in the domestic domain and the subsequent design.

The context of use is an important factor to keep in mind when thinking of possible valuable applications for the user. The work environment receives a lot of attention. In this context usability is a very important property of an application. Traditionally, usability is associated with five attributes; learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction (Nielsen, 1993). Clearly these attributes are of importance in the work environment. However, it can be questioned if these attributes are able to fulfil the needs for people in the home environment. Compared to the work environment, the home setting is not so much task focused. People’s rhythms of everyday live have to be considered and taken into account. People engage in different activities, and experiences seem to be a key attribute in the home environment. Atmosphere, privacy, the family, being together, relax, entertain, cosiness, trust, habits, stay in touch are all topics that play an important role in the context of the home. People have goals different than improving productivity or efficiency when using technology in the home (Plaisant, Druin, Hutchinson, 2002). The social spaces in the home where family members spend the most substantial part of their time interacting are separated from workspaces where PC’s are kept (Meateas et al (1996); Venkatesh (1996)). The HomeNet study found that interpersonal communication is more popular than information or entertainment applications (Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, Szczypula, Kiesler, Scherlis, 1998).

Besides the kind of tasks and behaviours that are prevalent in the home environment, another factor is different in the home environment from the work environment. Usability is generally treated separately from aesthetics. The aesthetics component in product design appears to be restricted to making products beautiful in appearance (Djajadiningrat, Overbeeke & Wensveen, 2000). Almost everybody is a witness of the interaction with the most beautiful product that frustrates you the very moment you start to use it as intended. Home users are more likely to be less tolerant for ugly, utilitarian designs and hardware or software failures (Plaisant et al, 2002). Finally, home users are more diverse than the target audiences of many technology products (Scholtz, Mateas, Salvador, Sorenson, 1996). Besides the fact that people prefer beautiful products and systems over ugly designs, the overall experience people have while interacting with the system or product is important as well.

It is important, especially in the home context, that besides the aesthetic character of the product, attention is devoted to the enjoyment of the experience that users receive from interacting with it. Precursors of this enjoyment of experience can be of different natures, e.g. challenge, seductive, playful, and rewarding. It is believed that social presence can be one of these motivations for an enjoying experience. Of course the other aspects described above must be taken into account as well. One must try to design a system that stimulates experiences and looks nice as well.

4.5 THE EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING TVThe amount of hours that people spend per day watching television in the industrialized world is 3 hours in average (Kubey & Csikszentmihayi, 2002). This means that somebody who lives up to 75 years would spend 9 years of his valuable life in front of the tube. The Independent Television Commission’s (ITC) Immersive Television project has identified four components of users’ experiences of media (presence based on a factor analysis of the ITC-SOPI): a sense of (1) being located within a media-depicted space, (2) engagement with the narrative, (3) naturalness of (and interaction with) the presentation, and (4) unwanted side effects (Freeman, Lodge, and Moss, 2001). Shared aspects of an entertainment experience are important as well, as evident in pubs, which show live football matches on modest screens. It is the shared excitement of a special occasion that attracts people.

Sport spectatorship is an especially pervasive phenomenon. People have an enormous interest in the passive consumption of competitive sports. In addition, it is suggested that “casual sociability” is a prime motivator for sports spectating. Since the ancient times, sports have always stimulated people. In the ancient coliseums 40000-45000 people were able to follow a sports game. Today, a game can be viewed by up to 200 million spectators.

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Figure 2. Korean fans during the World Championship 2002

The role of the electronic media is enormous in heightening the interest and the ability in spectator sports. Through the use of technology the audience for a single game went from thousands to millions. The combination of the interest in sports and the tremendous use of the television make sense in the home environment. People watch sports at home on their TV; we are interested in how we can give people a sense of being together while they are sharing this activity. Social presence is believed to be a strong user benefit in this context.

4.6 AMBIENT INTELLIGENCEIn the near future people are able to access distributed networks of intelligent interaction devices that provide them with information, communication, and entertainment at any time and any place. This is part of the Ambient Intelligence vision (Philips Research). The devices in the environment will adapt themselves to the user and even anticipate the needs of the user. The digital environment has a number of defining characteristics; it is sensitive, adaptive, and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient Intelligence is characterised by its ubiquity, transparency, and intelligence. Ubiquity refers to the situation that the user is surrounded by a multitude of interconnected embedded systems. Transparency refers to the invisibility of the systems and the movement into the background of the user’s environment. The intelligence aspect deals with the fact that the system will be able to recognise the inhabitants, and adapts itself, learns form the behaviour of the user, and it is even able to show emotion.

When we apply this vision to the basic need of people of staying in touch despite an unavoidable spatial distance, some interesting opportunities arise. It might be possible to control the level of social presence people experience depending on a number of factors, for example depending on the person with whom you are interacting, the time of the day, place, or topic. The devices in the environment can communicate and interact in order to provide the user with the optimal environmental setting. Lighting, heating, and communication systems could be adjusted depending on the different interactions between remote locations. Technologies have to be embedded in more social areas in the home in such a way that they minimise the unwanted side effects of technology. An example can illustrate a kind of unwanted side effect. Technologies such as email, that home users appear to want to use to stay in touch with remote friends and family, can have the unwanted effect of keeping them isolated from their collocated family members, perhaps even causing declines in psychological and social well-being (Kraut, Kiesler, Mulkhopadlhyay, Scherlis, Patterson, 1998). Considering this project it is worth mentioning that the intended goal is NOT to replace the existing or face-to-face interactions, however, it is intended to enable interaction or communication at moments between locations where communication would not be possible otherwise. Physical distance could be a destroyer of the ability to communicate. With social presence we try to enable communication in such a situation.

In the current research we are interested if minimal visualization of the activity of the beloved one is able to achieve a level of social presence. Weiser & Brown (1996) discuss related issues like background information and calm computing. In order to be able to move in the direction described in the scenario above, more knowledge is needed about people’s needs, motives, abilities, preferences concerning the interaction with other people, locations and devices, in the ambient intelligent environment described. The next

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paragraph gives a discussion of projects that are related to the domains of the home and ‘social presence’ like contexts.

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5. RELATED WORK Within the CHI community, specific research and design efforts for the home environment are sparse. Much of the work that has been done is focused on the workplace aspects of homes (in Hindus et al, 2001). The topic of awareness is closely related to social presence. However, most awareness work has focused on workgroup and workplace concerns (Hindus et al, 2001).

The Casablanca project applied CSCW and CHI techniques to the home. It revealed that users wanted devices that respected privacy and did not create new obligations. A “Presence Light” was made in the Casablanca project as an awareness-related concept. A pair of objects are linked; the objects show activity form a remote location. If one light senses nearby sounds or movement it tells the other light in the other house to turn on. More activity makes the light brighter. After user testing this lamp was transformed into an Intentional Presence Lamp were no active sensing took place; a user’s presence was communicated to others only if (s) he explicitly activated the device.

RoomLink is an audio space-related concept in which an ‘always on’ connection links two rooms in separate households using high quality audio. Users can hear everything that happens at the other location.

The Aroma (Abstract Representation of Presence Supporting Mutual Awareness) project explored the kind of awareness that people can maintain effortlessly about other beings that are located physically close (Pedersen and Sokoler, 1997). Pure abstract representations as presence indicators are used on the display site for the purpose of peripheral awareness (i.e. images that put a low demand on attention while conveying ‘enough’ information about the other site).

In Telewindows a solution is sought to overcome the social isolation of homebound elderly (Heeter, Gregg, Dekker, Climo, Biocca, Reed, Haley, Wilson, 2001). Like a window in a room, a TeleWindow can be opened anytime to see and hear and be seen and heard by those on the other side of the window. TeleWindow uses audio, video and network technology to open a window to a distant location. TeleWindows were opened and kept open for long periods of time, providing a continuous presence connecting the two locations. It was possible to make conversations with persons at the other location, other times it is used more like being in the same room together going about daily life. TeleWindows provides a new kind of social relationship: an ambient presence, a shared window between one individual's life and the lives of chosen social group, friends and/or family.

The PhotoShare Tele-Application enables users to view photos together, while the persons are at remote (home) locations (de Greef, & IJsselsteijn, 2001). The platform includes a common viewing space where the photos are displayed and selected, as well as an audio connection and a large screen video connection for communication between the two sites. The effects of video communication were studied on social presence. Results indicated that adding broadband, life-size video communication significantly increased social presence.

Both audio and videoconferencing systems have received a substantial amount of attention in social presence literature, mainly in the context of professional, work-related meetings and computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) (Greef, IJsselsteijn, 2001). Participants are placed in situations with video-windows on a desktop system, or on adjoining monitors, working on shared applications that are shown simultaneously on each screen.

In the current project we are interested in assessing the experiences of two different kind of groups (people alone at location versus group of friends at other location) in the interaction with a system that enhances social presence. The activity people share in this project is relatively new in the application field; watching television. Moreover, group attraction is introduced and analysed. Several questions are answered, like; ‘does the single person benefit more of the social presence enhancement than group viewers?’, or, ‘is the single viewer more part of the group when they receiver more information about the other location?’. More questions and results are discussed in the results paragraph. Based on literature we expect that the visualization with more information will cause more social presence than the sketch visualization.

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6. USE OF REQUIREMENTS CONCERNING THE DIFFERENT DOMAINSThis paragraph describes the (road to the) visualization that is designed; requirements will be pointed out, and ideas for visualizations will be given, finally the final visualization is discussed.

In the current study we take the issues that we encounter in the different domains into account. Since the environment at hand is the home, it is important that we do not invade in people’s privacy. Another important aspect we keep in mind is the facts that we do not want to disturb the activity people engage in, and it is important that social presence with remote people is achieved. The demand on attention should be minimised as well. The context of the experiment and the visualization that is used to connect the users at the two locations is described as follows.

The scenario described earlier can be used as a description of the context;“It is Friday evening, 20.00 o’clock. Bob, John and Max have gathered at Bob’s. Tonight it is going to happen; the important football match is about to take place, and they are going to enjoy it together. They are sitting on a couch in the living room in front of the tube.

300 kilometres up north in a living room, Eric is sitting alone on his couch. He is thinking about his friends who are going to watch the same match together. If only he lived closer, then he would join them as well.”

To summarize, the requirements concerning the system: Enhance social presence No audio (too disturbing to main activity (and has been done in other studies)) Low on attentional requirements (should be calm/in the background) Keep in mind privacy matters (info displayed only for friends) Synchronous system is needed, both sides have to be able to interact freely (both sides are

able to ‘send and receive’ information, they both see each other) Co-temporality; both sides can interact at every point in time (there is no particular point in

time where it is possible to interact, people are interacting on the same time with each other)

Simultaneously; both sides have to be able to interact simultaneously (they have to be present at the same time, otherwise the real-time interaction is not realistic)

The road to the visualizationWith the requirements in mind, different ideas for the visualization were generated. Visualization refers to the information that the different locations receive about each other. Different ideas for generating and displaying the visualization are thought of. It is possible to use different kind of information to represent the ‘status’ of the other person. Some interesting information sources in this context are:

How many people are at the other location? Who is at the other location? What is/are the(se) person(s) doing? Do they react on me? How much activity is going on? Are they engaged in the same activity as I? Are people moving? Are people talking? If yes, to whom, what are they saying?

There are different ways to represent the activity of people or the identity of various people. For example, different colours can be used to indicate different levels of activity. Different avatars in the visualization or different objects can be used to represent different users. Different modalities can be used to indicate different information. More research is needed to investigate what modality is suited best for what kind of information.

In this project it is chosen to use the amount and nature of movements of the different locations as information to visualize. Images or the activity at one location are captured by a camera and either displayed as they are (full video) or processed with software to produce silhouette like images. These visualizations will be displayed in the environment of the TV screen while people are watching the program on TV. This

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way it is possible to stay aware of the activities/movements of the other persons. Again, there are different possibilities to design these visualizations in the system. Some ideas are displayed below as rough sketches.

Some ideas for visualizationsThe visualization can be displayed as part of the screen as a kind of a border around the images of the TV program. It holds again that different representations can be used to provide different kind of information. More intensive colours can be used for more persons, different textures for different people, certain animation/movements of images to represent audio levels, etc.

The visualization can be created at one of the corners of the screen. It is possible that the user has the possibility to change it according to his/her preferences.

The visualization can be designed as well in another way where you actually see the people that you are interacting with in your screen. Different things can be used to represent the interaction partner; e.g. abstract representations, static pictures, or live video images. The face(s) of the interaction partner (s) can be directed towards or away from you. In the example it looks like people are watching with you because of the fact that the faces are directed towards the screen and not towards you. It has to be tested of course how people react on this and find out what their preferences are in this context. Possibly the size of the screen can be adjusted, so that the user can choose what is more important for his at that specific time (the program he is attending to or the communication partners).

The visualization that we choose for in this project looks like the following. The visualization of the others is displayed on the surface above the TV screen. Two different kind of visualization are used in this project; a full video connection (no audio), and a visualization that looks like a silhouette like sketch of the people in front of the camera. This is no abstract representation like the examples above; the movements visible in the visualization are the movements of the persons that are interacting with each other.

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Controlling the level of presenceFrom literature it can be said that people prefer different levels of social presence depending on the task that they are performing. For example, for emotionally loaded tasks, more social presence is preferred than in formal tasks were factual information is communicated. In addition, it may be the case that people prefer a certain level of social presence with their partner than with their mother in law for example. The design of future social presence should enable users to somehow control this level of social presence. Besides different levels for different persons or situations, it is possible that people have different preferences concerning levels of received and sent social presence. It can be that the user preferences for the received versus send level of social presence differ. This can be a research question in future experiments.

Two ideas for metaphors or concepts that can be used for manipulating social presence can be the following. Social presence can be thought of as a sort of bridge that connects different users. On the one side

there is Bob, on the other side his friends. It is possible to make the interface of a social presence system look like a bridge on which the involved users are displayed at both ends. The user is possible to move his avatar or picture in different directions. Moving the avatar more towards the other users can represent an increase in social presence, a decrease in social presence can be achieved by moving Bob’s representation away from the others. Moreover, different kind of bridges can be chosen as a kind of different road to take to reach your friend. Depending on the kind of bridge you take, the social presence characteristics will be chosen. For example a broad bridge can convey a lot of information about the different sides. Of course, it is possible to generate lot of ideas to visualise this. However, it is important that knowledge is available on the different kind of information that is desired in what situation.

Another way to represent the different amounts of social presence might be to consider the social presence concept as a window concept (comparable with the TeleWindows concept). In front of the window there are curtains, which can be opened and closed, representing the amount of information that is conveyed to the other side. Different windows in different rooms can represent connections to various people or locations. One can enable the user to make new windows in the house (drag and drop), meaning making new social presence connections with people. The curtains can be customised according to the users preferences. Different textures can show for example the kind of information they are conveying. For example a clef can represent that audio is used, where as a camera shows that video is used. Again, the statement holds that more knowledge is needed in order to be able to give suggestions about the information that should be used.

In the current project the idea of enabling users to control the level of presence is not implemented. This is not the focus of the project. The focus of the project is to investigate the effects of the amount of information on social presence and on group attraction. The project is not a design assignment, but a research oriented project. The experimental design that is used is described in the next paragraph. Besides the hypothesis that is tested, other information is collected as well. Data is gathered about the use of the TV, preferences/ advantages/ disadvantages in the different systems used, desires of people concerning the different topics (e.g. social presence, watching TV). The experimental design is explained in the next paragraph.

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7. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Problem statementDespite the range of communication technologies available today, it is felt that people between different home environments have a need to maintain relationships with members that are spatially distributed. Social interaction requires signals; ways of letting others know our actions and intentions.

The goal of the experiment is to obtain knowledge about social presence in the home context and to study the effect of different visualizations on social presence and group attraction. Social presence is the feeling of being socially together. Does the experience of social presence vary depending on the amount of information people receive about their friends? Is there a difference in the experience of social presence and group attraction between the people who are alone versus part of a group? Is a minimal representation of information enough to establish a sense of presence? As explained earlier group attraction can be described as the degree to which an individual desires to identify with and be an accepted member of the group. Is there a relationship between social presence and group attraction? Is it possible to achieve a higher group attraction when one is able to increase the level of social presence? We are interested in whether the group attraction changes when the feeling of being together (social presence) changes.

A group of 3 friends (a primary group) is split (2-1) and hosted in two different rooms in a home environment. We choose for friends because we deal with the home environment, which is a place were you interact with people you know. The idea of splitting the group into two groups of different sizes is new. It is now possible to study the differences/similarities of the variables on the different groups. It can be that single viewers benefit more from social presence like applications than group viewers do for example. Moreover, it is a rather realistic situation that one person is not able to join the rest of the group. In the experiment, the persons are watching an involving football match ‘together’ from different locations (the living room and another room). They do not know that they are in the same building. While people watch the match, visual information about the activities of their friends at the other location is displayed above the TV screen. Movements of the persons are captured by a camera and projected above the screen of the person on the other location.

Each room is equipped with a large TV screen that shows simultaneously the same football match, a camera that captures movements/activity of the people sitting in front of the screen, and a projector that displays the captured visualization of the activity of the other room on the wall above the TV screen. The visualization can be of two different kinds, a silhouette like visualization and a full video visualization. We choose for these two because it enables us to make a difference in the amount of information people receive about each other. The first is a processed degraded quality of video and looks like a silhouette of the person(s) in the other room. The visual information is filtered in order to provide some information about the other’s activities, but not in an intrusive way. The visual information is blurred in a way and provides enough information to give people who are engaged in the program a sense of awareness about the remote location. In the full video condition, the quality of the video is high and people can see detailed images. We use these differences to check whether less information is able to establish a sense of social presence. Lower bandwidth is required in the case of less information.

Besides the controlled experiment, more descriptive data is acquired as well. Different questions in the questionnaires addressed other questions as well. This is done to get a better idea of other factors as well. For example, it is interesting to check what kind of communication technologies people use today and what they would like to use in the future. Moreover, with how large a group do people prefer to watch TV, what kind of programs do they prefer to watch alone versus in company of others. This and other information is discussed in the result section after the results of the experiment. This information was elicited by means of questionnaires. These questionnaires are developed for this project. All the questionnaires that are used in this project are tested before using them in the (pilot) tests. It can be that users interpret items differently than intended by the experimenter. To tackle this problem, all questionnaires are tested and adjusted.

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7.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT

SettingThe experiment is done in the HomeLab (at Philips Research Eindhoven). HomeLab is a future home-simulation, a test laboratory that looks like a normal house and thus provides us with a ‘natural situation’ to test the behaviour of the participants in the different conditions. We choose for this setting because we are interested in the home environment. The target group we are interested in are groups of friends who want to share an activity with each other. Watching television is often done at home. For the participants the inner part of the HomeLab resembles a real house.

ParticipantsIn total 34 participants take part in the experiment in groups of 3 persons who know each other. Participants are Dutch friends (no love relationships) who like to watch football. These friends are divided (2-1) and placed in two different rooms. Considering the interest in football, the subjects are male persons. The age range of the participant is from 18-38, the average age is 24,9 years. The socio-economical status of the participants is divers, around half of the participants were employed, half of them is a student. The occupations and/or backgrounds are very divers, ranging from medical backgrounds to economical, technical and chemical backgrounds.

ConditionsThe interest in this experiment is in the effect that of different levels of visual information might have on social presence and group attraction. Four conditions can be distinguished in the experiments that vary the amount of information about the different locations. The information both locations receive is synchronized all in the visual channel. Audio is not included, previous studies showed that audio does have an effect on social presence. We are more interested in the possibilities of the visual channel. The design of the experiment is depicted in the figure 3 below.

Single viewer 1 2 3

Group Viewer 1 2 3

Figure 3. Design of Experiment

First two kinds of viewers can be distinguished; single (only one person at remote location) and group viewer (part of the 2 person group). It happens that one person is at one location, and his friends are at another. This friend would like to be the remote group as well. This group viewer condition is a between subjects condition. The other three conditions are implemented as within subjects conditions in which every subject receives every condition. The different conditions are the control condition, a sketchy visual condition and finally the full video condition. As explained earlier, we are interested in the question whether lesser information is able to evoke a sense of social presence as well as the full video possibility. Movement is an important aspect of the behaviour of people, it displays what people are doing and where. Obviously, some important elements (such as facial expressions) lack in the sketch condition, yet are present in the full condition.

In the control condition people are watching the same match on TV at remote locations. However, the persons do not see any visualizations above their TV screen. They are told that their friends are watching the same match simultaneously. This condition serves as a baseline to compare the different visualizations. It can very well be the case that people experience a certain level of social presence when they know about each other that they are engaged in the same activity at a certain moment.

Another condition is a sketchy visual condition; where people are watching the game on the TV screen from remote locations. The processed visual representation of the person (s) in the other location is projected on the wall behind the screen/on the screen. This representation is a black and white (silhouette-like) image (see figure 4) that is up-dated in real time when there is a change in movement.

Sequence of conditions is counterbalanced

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Figure 4. Sketch-like visualization

In the third condition people see full video of their friends while they are watching the match. In this visualization, more detail is depicted and the people in the visualization are always visible. This is contrary to the sketchy visualization, where people only see silhouettes when there is a change in activity.

The trials are counterbalanced to avoid any potential sequence effects. Every group gets to see the same match to prevent any effect from differences in games. The test setting is a natural home environment, drinks are provided during the test to create a nice atmosphere.

Independent variableThe independent variable is the amount of visual information. The different conditions differ from no visual information to silhouette like information to full video.The group setting is an independent variable as well. People are placed in either the single viewer ‘group’ (1 person) condition or the group viewer condition (2 persons together). Every participant is subjected to all the three levels of visual information.

Dependent variablesSocial presence is the factor that is measured. The perceived level of social presence is measured after each condition by use of a questionnaire. This questionnaire is adapted from the IPO-SPQ (IPO Social Presence Questionnaire) (de Greef, and IJsselsteijn, 2001). The IPO_SPQ makes use of two approaches to measure social presence. It uses the semantic differential items from Short, Williams and Christie that measures more affective qualities of the medium. Next to these semantic differential items, the IPO-SPQ includes subjective attitude statements (based in theory) about the experience using a 7-point agree-disagree scale. The questionnaire that is used was developed for the current experiment used the items from the semantic differential, excluding two items that scored insufficiently in the reliability analysis. The items from the subjective attitude scale were adapted to the current project in discussion with one of the authors of the IPO-SPQ.

Another dependent variable is the level of Group attraction experienced by the subjects. This is measured by the Group Attitude Scale (Evans & Jarvis, 1986) after each condition. The Group Attitude Scale (GAS) measures group attraction. Group attraction is defined as: ‘an individual’s desire to identify with and be an accepted member of the group’ (Evans (1986). The GAS is composed of an equal number of positive and negative statements to guard against response set. The GAS is in English originally. Considering the fact that the participants are Dutch-speaking persons, this questionnaire was carefully translated. Different translators with the following procedure were asked to translate the questionnaire. First both a native and non-native speaker translated the questionnaire from English to Dutch, and secondly, again a native and non-native speaker translated the items from Dutch to English. This activity resulted in two ‘new’ questionnaires, which were compared with the original to see whether there was a difference in wording and meaning. The analysis resulted in changing one word in the ‘new’ Dutch version of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was tested again with a Dutch person to see whether there were any misunderstandings that we did not see ourselves.(An example of the different questionnaires that are used for the experiment can be found in appendix 3).

It is interesting to see whether social presence and group attraction co-vary depending on the nature of the amount of information. Before the experiments are run, pilot tests are done to check assumptions, and eventually change or adapt the visualizations if it appeared that it did not work properly.

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7.2 PILOT TESTS

Pilot 1: ‘perception of activity’The assumption is that because of the fact that (movement/activity) information is presented in the periphery of the user’s view it will be visible to the person without having to move his/her head. Visual information is presented in the area above the TV screen. The field of view of humans is limited, so the location of the information relative to the observer is important. In the field of view, two different areas can be discriminated: the foveal area and the peripheral area. The fovea is critical in visual perception. Whenever you ‘look’ directly at a target, the eyes are rotated so that the image of the target falls on the foveal region. However, the periphery is particularly sensitive to motion information. It is assumed that staying aware of the activities in the visualizations while watching an involving TV program does not require too much attention. The differences in the visualization will be the appearance and/or differences of movement of the persons depicted in the scene. The questions to be answered in this pilot test are:

“Do people perceive a change in activity when the visualization is presented above the TV they are watching?”

“Do people extract the activity information from the visualizations while the are paying attention to the program they are watching on TV?”

During the test, visualizations are projected above the TV screen. The subjects watch an involving program and are asked to pay attention to it, in order to be able to answer some questions afterwards. After the program the subjects are asked to fill in a questionnaire that addresses information related to the visualization and the program they saw (e.g. was the information meaningful, how many persons identified, what were they doing). The subjects were two persons (one male, one female) in the same age category as the participants in the experiment. After analysing the results of the questionnaires, it appears that people are able to make sense of the silhouettes they see most of the time. The large movements are identified; smaller detailed movements were not always identified. They can identify most of the movements that are made. Moreover, it is possible to pay attention and switch between the two resources (TV screen and visualizations). For the silhouettes it is more difficult to monitor two sources at the same time than for example of the full video. The full video provides more information about the other person, which was preferred by the persons in the pilot test. People like to see the environment the other person was in and the expressions of the persons.

Pilot 2: ‘level of activity’Pilot test 2 is done in order to answer the following question:

Is there enough activity to visualize during a program; are people moving enough, so that there is something to see in the visualizations?

People were asked to watch TV. It was analysed if movement would be seen during the game. It appears that people do make movements. These movements are of two kind; reactions to certain events in the program and movements that are directed to the interaction partner. At crucial moments in the game people reacted on these on a spontaneous way (e.g. making waving movements with their arms when a chance was wasted by a player). However, sometimes, people tried to get into contact with the persons at the other location, looking for interaction (e.g. looking in the direction of the camera and waving).

In the next paragraph the descriptive results of the experiment will be discussed.

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8. DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION In this paragraph the descriptive data will be discussed. This data comes from a questionnaire filled in by the same participants (as the total experiment).

Figure 5 below displays the amount of hours the participants watch television a day. No person watches 0 hours television a day. 6 % of the persons watched less than 1 hours. So, 94 % watched more than an hour television a day.

Figure 5. The amounts of hours the participants watch television per day.

Most people watch television together with one person, who is most of the times the partner (Figure 6). Only 6 % of the respondents watch TV alone. This is a very low number, which may indicate that watching TV is a social activity (many people in the sample had a partner, probably younger people or elderly will watch alone).

Figure 6. With how many other persons do people watch TV?

Different drivers can be named for people for watching TV together with other persons; the main drivers are the cosines or atmosphere when you are together with other people, the second largest reason is the discussion that is possible when people are together. People like to talk about the things they see on the television. The figure below provides an overview of the different drivers that were reported by the participants.

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Figure 7. Drivers for people to watch TV together with other person

There is a difference in the kind of programs people prefer to watch alone versus the programs people like to watch in presence of other people. This is depicted in the figure below. People prefer to watch sport and movies with others (they appreciate their reactions and company), whereas they prefer to watch news and documentaries alone. They do not want to be disturbed while concentrating these kinds of (serious) programs. For more programs like sports games or movies people enjoy making a cozy atmosphere and experiencing other people’s reactions.

Figure 8. Comparison of programs people prefer to watch alone versus in presence of others

Figure 7 shows the current use and desired future use of communication technologies while people are watching TV. Currently people use the phone often. From the first column it can be concluded that people want to communicate with others at remote locations more than they do now. Currently the web cam is not used at all, in the future 17 percent of the people wish to use the web cam. Chat programs are desired as well.

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Figure 9. Comparison of current communication and desired communication while watching TV

Most people indicated that a system that showed visual information about remote persons would enrich the interaction with their friends. The questions were rated on a 1 to 7 Likert scale, ranging from ‘totally disagree’ to ‘totally agree’. People would like to have a system were they can communicate or interact with each other over distance (reported value on scale from 1-7 was 5.64). They prefer to see and hear the persons.

The participants reported several aspects that they found important in the context of communicating with remote persons. These aspects are made visible in figure 10. Most people value knowing the (emotional) reactions of the other person, secondly people want to know the opinion of the other person about the activity they are sharing. People’s expressions were valued often as well, moreover, many people would like to see what the environment looks like at the other person’s end, and activity related issues e.g. ‘what is he drinking?’ In the cases that the respondents mentioned audio and video as such this was placed in the corresponding categories. In other cases, for example they stated communication, they did not make explicit in what modality this should be.

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Figure 10. Important aspect about other persons

Figure 11 shows the different activities people mentioned on the question what kind of activities they would like to share with a person at another location. Of all the named activities (100%), communicating was mentioned in 30 % of the cases, followed by gaming (17%) and eating or drinking together (17 %), watching TV was stated in 12 % of the total activities. Other preferred activities were just having fun, cooking, doing the dishes together, and listening or making music together.

Figure 11. Activities people prefer to share to different locations

Table 7 discusses the two visualizations that we used during the experiment. As visible in the table, in both visualizations people would like to add audio. People would like to communicate more about the activity they are sharing. During the experiments people were using sign-like language very often. They were trying to communicate in various ways; some wanted to call the other, others were looking for pen and paper to write text messages to get their message across if making signs by hand would not satisfy. Expectations based on literature would suggest that adding audio would increase social presence. People experienced the full video as more valuable and nice than the sketch visualization. The sketchy visualization does not always convey valuable information. Only if a person moves, the silhouettes are visible. In some cases people were not very sure about the movements the remote person was making. In communication, the action-reaction principle is very important. Observing the people in the sketch visualization makes clear that this principle is sometimes broken. People had troubles with identifying the message, and did not know how to respond. They saw that something was going on, but were not always able to identify the behavior. Some people

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suggested that it might be better if the silhouettes were “always on”, and consisted of more detailed sketches. This would probably solve the action-reaction problem. Overall, most people thought that it did add up to the feeling of being together, however, some reported that it did not add anything at all.

Visuali-zation

Advantages Disadvantages Missing information Comments

Sketch

Some information is given, you do not feel totally alone

Had some idea of watching the match together

Friends are closer than without the system

Single viewer is involved

Provides a global impression about the (des) interest of other person

Something new

Not a continuous silhouette

Not always a real impression of what is going on with friends

Only two colors Impersonal, cold, not

lively Not clear No communication

possible No sound There is movement

needed to see something, which is not always present

You need to move in order to show them something

Disturbing at some moments

Too less information Boring

Topic of conversation

What do the friends look like?

Clearer images, more detailed representation of other(s)

Expressions/ emotions

Detailed reaction Ambiance at

other location Ability to chat Contact

More visual details are valued

Include audio If more

sensitive to changes more informative

“Maybe nice for baby-sitting”

Full

Feeling of being together despite of distance

Fits in home environment

Clear image Reactivity high Colors Environment of others is

visible Ability to monitor

activities Visual reactions Good idea of feelings of

others Clear interaction with

each other Ability to react on each

other Lively Always on Real time interaction

No sound Sometimes difficult

to make contact when others are focused on game

Sometimes it is distracting

Quality of image can be better

Ability to chat Topic of

conversation Would be nice to

see what the other sees of you

Would be nice if you would be able to zoom in/out

Would be nice if you are able to switch the system on/off

Ability to switch between friends

Consider placement of visualization (maybe too high, to far away, might be less distracting if part of screen/split screen)

Ability to turn if off if it is too distracting

Nice if somebody is sick/cannot leave a room for medical reasons

Table 5. Advantages and disadvantages of two visualizations (sketch and full video)

The next paragraph discusses the results of the experiment.

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9. RESULTS Analysis of the data by means of the General Linear Model for repeated measures in SPSS 11.0 revealed the following effects to be significant:

Effect of condition on Social presence experience F (2) = 119.2, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on Social presence by medium F (2) = 36.7, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on Group Attraction F (2) = 8.7, p = 0.000

All three effects are in the expected direction. Table 11 indicates the effect of condition on the experience of social presence. There is no significant difference between the different viewers. Both single and group viewers experience the different conditions similarly. The conditions were people saw the full visualization is higher rated on social presence than either the sketch or the control condition.

Figure 11. Results about Social Presence experience

The second effect is the effect of condition on Social Presence of the medium. Table 12 illustrates this effect.

Figure 12. Results for Social Presence of medium

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Both kinds of viewers rate the Social Presence of the different media the same. There is a difference between the social presence ratings for the medium for the different visualizations. The full video visualization was rated higher on social presence than both the single and sketch visualization. There is no difference between the control and sketch condition.

The effect of condition on group attraction is visible in figure 13.

Figure 13. Results for condition on group attraction

The effect of condition on group attraction is significant, there is no difference between the viewers (F (2)=2.3, p = 0.112). The effect of the different visualizations is the same for both kinds of viewers. The full video visualization caused a higher group attraction compared to both the control and sketch visualization. In the figure it is visible that there is a difference between the viewers in the control condition and the sketch visualization. The difference between the viewers is almost nothing in the full visualization. Providing people with information about the rest of the group gives them more attraction to the group.

All the effects described above remain significant when two covariates (whether people saw the game and whether they knew the result) are taken into account in the analysis.

Effect of condition on Social presence experience F (2) = 59.7, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on Social presence of medium F (2) = 25.6, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on Group Attraction F (2) = 5.1, p = 0.009

Besides both measures for social presence and group attraction, other issues have been addressed in the questionnaire. For these items, the following effects are present:

Effect of condition on fascinating interaction F (1) = 39.7, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on feeling of being watched F (1) = 17.9, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on attention on visualization F (1) = 33.0, p = 0.000 Effect of condition on use of the system F (1) = 45.5, p = 0.000 Interaction effect “condition * kind of viewer” on use of the system F (1) = 4.7, p = 0.038 Effect of condition on attention to TV F (1) = 20.3, p = 0.000

For the following aspects, the effect is not significant: Condition on negative distraction of visualization F (2) = 1.4, p = 0.249 Condition on attention of group viewer to friends in room F (2)= 0.21, p = 0.813

Figure 14 shows the effect of condition on the aspect whether the interaction was rated fascinating. The interaction during the full video visualization was rated much more fascinating for both viewers.

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Figure 14. Results for fascinating interaction

Figure 15 shows the result for the item about whether people felt being watched. During the full video condition people felt more watched at them at both the sketch and control conditions. There was no difference between the kinds of viewers.

Figure 15. Results for "the feeling of being watched"

On the question whether people want to use the system, a difference is seen between the conditions as well. The full video visualization scored significantly higher than the sketch visualization. This is illustrated in figure 17. Group viewers scored higher on wanting to use the full visualization at home than the single viewers.

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Figure 16. Results for "do you want to use the system at home?"

Both the sketch and the full video visualization were rated equally distracting; this was the same for both viewers (see figure 18).

Figure 17. Results for negative distraction of visualization

There is no difference in the attention group viewer devote to the friends in the same room over the different visualizations (F (2)= 0.21, p = 0.813).

People devoted more attention to the television during the sketch visualization than they did in the full video condition (see figure 18).

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Figure 18. Attention people devote to the TV

Three questions were included in the questionnaires that were not subjected to statistical analysis, yet they provide valuable data. The questions were the following for the single and group viewer:

Single viewer questions Group viewer questionsDid you feel left out? Did you have the feeling that your friend was left

out?Did you feel alone? Did you have the feeling that your friend would

feel alone?How often did you have the feeling that your friend really belonged to the group?

How often did you have the feeling that your friend really belonged to the group?

These questions can not be compared statistically because they do not measure the same aspects. The group viewer is asked to imagine how the single viewer would feel, whereas the own feelings of the single viewers are asked. Comparing the different means on the questions can give some insight about how the group viewer thinks about the situation of the single viewer and compare this with the reported situation by the single viewer. Figures 19, 20 and 21 illustrate the differences. It seems that the group viewer thinks that the single viewer is more left out than reported by the single viewer. The group viewer thinks that the single viewer feels lonelier than actually reported by the single viewer. On the question about belonging to the group, the estimation of the group viewer is similar to the impression single viewers give.

Figure 19. Additional question; single viewer feels left out?

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Figure 20. Additional question; single viewer feels alone?

Figure 21. Additional question; single viewer belonged to group?

The next paragraph will discuss these results and interpret the data.

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10. DISCUSSIONPeople have the feeling that they are socially together when they are watching television from different locations in the full video condition. In the case of the sketch visualization this feeling is for both viewers much lower. When taking the knowledge (having seen the game or not; knowing the final result of the game) people have about the game into account, these effects remain the same; the richer the medium, the more socially together people (both viewers) feel. This is in line with the literature; the more rich the medium, the more social presence people with experience. This finding can have implications for developing calm technology. A balance has to be found to use both the correct kind and correct amount of information to base the technology on. In this study it appears that the sketch visualization is not able to elicit a high degree of social presence. Apparently basing the visualizations on movement and presenting them as silhouettes of the persons is not enough to enable the people to feel socially together. More research is needed to investigate what the ingredients are needed to design yet calm technology increase social presence. It might be the case that showing the silhouettes continuously increases social presence; this has to be tested to check if this is actually the case.

There is no difference in the experience of social presence between the viewers. This means that the single viewer feels socially together with the persons at the other location despite the physical distance between them and the isolation of the single viewer. The full visualization is able to create a feeling of being together for the single and for the group viewers that is not significantly different between the viewers. Both kind of viewers benefit equally from the richer medium.

Both measures of social presence indicate the same trend; the full visualization is considered better in increasing the feeling of being socially together than the sketch visualization.

In the case of the full visualization people are more attracted to the group. They identify more with the group and a more accepted member of the group then they do in the sketch or control condition. Providing people more information about the interaction partner elicits a higher attraction to group for both the single and group viewer. Single viewers feel more part of the group and more accepted when they are in the full video condition. This result is important; with rich communication technology it is possible to change the way people feel part of the group. By means of introducing technology, it is not needed anymore that people are alone in a communication situation feel isolated in comparison with people that are physically together.

People find the interaction with the full video visualization much more fascinating than the sketch visualization. There is no difference between the different viewers. This is probably because interaction is much more meaningful in the full video condition. People receive more detailed information about each other and are able to use the action re-action principle. People can see and identify the movements of the interaction partner, and use their movements to send their message across. In the sketch visualization this is much harder and limited to basic movements of for example the arms (e.g. waving). Interpreting facial expressions is not possible in the sketchy visualization either.

People feel more being watched in the full condition compared to the sketchy visualization. The score is relatively low (around 4 on a scale of 7) in the full visualization condition, yet there is a significant difference with the sketch condition (around 2). Both the single and group viewers feel more “watched at” in the full video condition, but this score is not high, so they did not feel awkward.

People want to use full visualization at home; they do not want to use the sketch visualization at home. The group viewers are more positive about the full video visualization than the single viewers. This is not in line with the expectation. It was expected that the single viewer would be more enthusiastic about a system that would give the opportunity to feel socially together with remote persons. The results indicate the contrary; the group viewers are more enthusiastic about the system. A possible explanation for this result is that the group viewers are with 2 persons in a room and thus are able to share their enthusiasm. The single viewer is alone in a room and is not able to talk about his opinions with anyone. The group viewers might mutually increase their enthusiasm, whereas the single viewer is viewing alone and does not have the chance of “catching” some of the others enthusiasm.

Both visualizations are equally distracting for both viewers. The average scores for both visualizations for both viewers are relatively low (around 3.5-4), indicating that people are not that much distracted by both visualizations.

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Group viewers devote as much attention to their friends in the same room in both conditions.

People devote more attention to the television during the sketch visualization than they did in the full video condition. A possible explanation for this result is that the sketch visualization was not interesting enough, and people directed their attention more to the TV. In combination with the result of the sketch visualization not being very fascinating, and both visualizations not being very distracting, this could very well be the reason for the increased attention to the television in the sketch visualization.

It appears that the group viewer overestimates the degree that the single viewer feels alone, and left out of the group. The group viewer thinks the single viewer is lonelier and feels more left out than the single viewer reports him selves. This might be because the group viewers are able to talk and have more interaction than is visually visible. The single viewer sees of course that the group viewers are talking, but does not know about what. The group viewers know what the single viewer is missing.

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11. CONCLUSIONSIt appears that the full video visualization is able to achieve a high degree of social presence. This holds for both kind of groups; single viewers and group viewers. People find the full visualization more a richer medium. Richer in this context means more personal, emotional, reactive, friendly, warmer. In addition the experience people had during the interaction during the full visualization was of more social presence. This means that people had a higher experience of being socially together. Aspects like having the impression of sharing an activity, receiving enough information about the other, actually having a meeting, are important in this context. The sketchy visualization is not rich enough to increase the feeling of social presence for both kinds of viewers.

When people receive more information about their interaction partner by means of for example a full video visualization, they are more attracted to the group then in a situation where they do not receive any information about the other or too less information. People, who would like to interact with individuals at a distance, benefit from rich communication technologies. When using rich communication technologies, the single feels the same towards the group as the single viewer, even though he is alone and isolated at a distance. Single viewers more with the group and feel a more accepted member of the group. This can have implications for the duration of being a member of the group, attending meetings or get together of the group, and the attitude towards the group.

The interaction with the full visualization is more fascinating than the sketch visualization. People prefer the full visualization to the sketch one and moreover express their desire for an extension of this system by means of adding sound to it. People consider watching television as a social activity where aspects as cosines, discussion about the program, and being together are key elements. According to the participants, sound is a very important element in this context. They have the opinion that a communication system where you are able to see your friends or family, engaged in the same activity as you, would enrich the interaction with their peers.

Both measures for social presence that are used in this study indicate the same trend. More research is needed however to develop an instrument for social presence that is valid and applicable to a broad domain.

11.1 RECOMMENDATIONSThe sketch visualization might score better on social presence and group attraction when the silhouettes of the persons are visible continuously instead of apparent only when there is a change in movement. People reported that they would prefer an ‘always on’ sketch over this current version in the context of watching television. This way, they think that they get more valuable information and a better understanding of what the person is doing. Moreover, it would be less distracting when the sketches were visible all the time. When something changes in the current visualization, they are immediately focused on it, whereas it might be easier to neglect it when it is on always.

Looking from the goal of increasing social presence, adding audio would probably increase social presence in both cases. Social presence would then be highest in the combination full video plus audio.

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30. Scholtz, J., Mateas, M., Salvador, T., and Sorenson, D., (1996). User requirements Analysis for the Home. Proceedings of CHI ’96, ACM Press, p. 326-327.

31. Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B (1976). The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. London: John Wiley & Sons.

32. Venkatesch, A., (1996). Computers and Other Interactive Technologies for the Home. CACM 39 (12), ACM Press, 47-54.

33. Weiser, M. & Brown, J.S. (1996). Designing calm technology. Powergrid Journal, v.1.0134. Wiener, M., & Mehrabian, A. (1968). Language within language: Immediacy, a channel in verbal

communication. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

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13. APPENDICES: Generated research questions in first phase of project Figures Questionnaires used (what questions inserted, what

out?)

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1. APPENDIX RESEARCH QUESTIONS GENERATED AT FIRST PHASE OF PROJECT

General1. What is presence? What are the degrees of presence?2. How to create presence in a mediated environment?3. What factors influence the concept of presence? How do these factors influence presence?

Which factors are most important?4. Can these factors be manipulated to control the degree and nature of presence?5. What need does presence (need to) fulfil?6. What are the causes and effects of presence?7. Why do we desire/need a sense of presence?8. What are the minimal necessary ingredients to achieve presence?9. In what manner can shared spaces enhance the social component of presence?10. When do users experience the interaction with a human and when is the interaction

artificial?11. Do users want control of presence (presence-regulator) when interacting with others?

What factors should be in control to manipulate presence?12. What is the effect of social presence on memory/vividness? Are things remembered as

well/bad as real presence situations?13. Do we want the possibility of a track of history of interactions with social presence? Do

we want the possibility to show previous interaction, store personal files, share them, use them in other environments, with other people? What will be the result of being able to store the interactions?

14. What behaviors emerge (in a group, or between individuals) where social presence is created between people in different environments?

15. Maximal presence equals optimal presence? In what situations does this hold true/untrue?16. What factors play a role in this emerging (group) behavior? 17. What (kind of) devices/applications are essential parts of the social environment?

Personal18. Is the level of presence people like to ‘receive’ equal to the level of presence like to

‘give’?19. Do people want control over the amount of social presence received and send?20. How to cope with conflicting desires for the level of social presence between interaction

partners?21. There is a paradox between individualism and connectedness. How to shape social

presence in such a way that belonging to a community enables the persons to keep their own identity and autonomy?

22. When and how to identify the desired balance between being connected and freedom? 23. In what condition is a person present? What are the important/necessary characteristics of

a person that makes somebody socially present?24. People are looking for identity, how can we shape ‘social presence’ so that identity is

reflected during communication/interaction?25. Is there a relation between the degree of social presence and the ability to show identity?26. How to represent the different identities in remote locations?27. People adapt and learn in varies situations. How to use presence for different ‘kind’ of

users? Experts versus novices in the use of social presence? Adapt to previous encounters (with particular persons/environments/systems)?

28. What do people (want to) get out of social presence? What is the “main” goal, or the underlying desire?

29. What is influence of smell and touch on social presence? In what situation smell and touch enrich the social interaction, when is it not desired?

30. Are there any differences in the experience/need for social presence between:

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(a) Men/women(b) Situations (e.g. work, travel, home, hobby, sport)(c) Young/older people(d) Seasons(e) Cultures(f) Personality differences(g) Places (h) Times of the day(i) Kind of mood(j) Different generations

Interaction with other people20. What will be the effect of creating social presence on the traditional means of

communicating/interacting?21. People are seeking for establishing and belonging to communities. Yet, people need a

certain amount of freedom in relationships. How to fit social presence optimally in such a way that freedom is ensured, but people experience the community? How to design social presence for the instinct of community and the desire to be free?

22. Communities form around specific standards, traditions, opinions. People can be part of different communities simultaneously. Do differences in the need for presence exist over different communities?

23. How to find a balance between freedom and connectedness?24. What is the relation between ‘virtual social presence’ and ‘real life social presence’? How

do they interact/influence each other?25. When a person is physically present, which characteristics are most important in the social

interaction? Can we use these characteristics to mimic social presence?26. How can we/do we influence presence by varying the nature of communicative acts

(sender, message, medium, receiver, feedback)? How do these components influence the level of social presence? What are possible interrelationships?

27. What is the effect of giving users the ability to control their identity during the interaction?28. What is the minimal level of social presence needed for acceptable /satisfying social

interaction?29. When looking at existing communication media, what are the factors that appeal to users,

and how can we use them in order to enhance presence in order to increase their goal?30. What is the effect of social presence on In-group identification (the degree to which people

see themselves as being a member of the group)?31. Does the effect of and the need for social presence vary across the levels of relationship?

(e.g. compare a first impression and the importance of visual cues with an existing relationship and the higher level knowledge persons have about each other)

Activity32. What activities can be supported by social presence, in what context, what form?33. What is the relationship between the kind of task and the need for social presence? (e.g.

emotional interaction, communication, information exchange, negotiation)

Contextual34. How to recognize the nature of the current community and how to adapt social presence in an

appropriate way?35. How to represent the presence of users in a certain environment? How to cope with differences

between users (e.g. differences in personality, preferences)? How to perceive and adapt to these differences?

36. Can we adapt ‘the level and nature’ of presence according to specific situation/environment (and to the users in that environment)?

37. What aspects of the environment are considered valuable for creating social presence?

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38. How can we create adaptive/responsive/personal social presence in environments? 39. What information should the environment have in order to adapt the level of social presence?40. Are different levels of social presence are needed in different environments? (home

environments, working environments, security, medical environments, educational environments, etc.) What (inter)relation(s) exists?

41. How can we integrate (new systems for) presence with existing ‘systems’ or aspects of the environment?

42. What (existing) aspects in an environment can aid in achieving social presence? What aspects of an environment have to be created/simulated in order to achieve a desirable level of social presence?

43. Is there a relation between the familiarity of the location and the experience of social presence?44. Can we use ‘social presence’ and the knowledge that systems/actors receive from it in order to

communicate with other devices/actors in the environment or in other environments? (e.g. change the lighting conditions when person X is talking to person Y, or adapt the odor that is disposed in a room depending on communication partner, involve other devices important in the house, change the medium of communication, devote more attention to facial expressions when performing task B)

45. Applications that learns from nature of ‘social presence’ preferences of members in group and respond to it accordingly (e.g. adjust the rate of frames, quality of different media, feedback quantity/quality, number/nature of visual cues like facial expressions, gestures, verbal intonations, posture, total body)? What are important characteristics to pay attention to?

46. What kinds of devices/applications/products in the home environment are valued most by people, and how can we use them to create social presence? (Traditional aspects/habits/products are common/important in a domestic environment; use might be valuable in the way to achieve social presence. (E.g. fridge door, postbox, door handle, bell, floor mat (welcome), coat rack)

47. Are objects, besides people, able to provide people valuable information in the interaction/communication process in order to create social presence?

48. What is the effect of different ‘physical’ characteristics of an environment on the experience of social presence; Light conditions Temperature Pressure Texture

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2. APPENDIX ADDITIONAL FIGURES OR TABLES OF THE DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

As visible in the figure below, more than half of the participants did not see the game. Some persons in the ‘did see’ bar saw parts of the game.

Figure 22. Number of persons who did and did not see the game

As figure below displays, more than half of the subjects did not know the result of the match. Moreover, for those who did know the result in advance, the match was interesting for the majority of the participants. Many persons, who knew the result, were still highly involved in the game until the very last second.

Figure 23. Result of match known by number of people

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3. APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRES Items in the Questionnaire that was administered before the experiment (instructions are

included, space for answering is removed here).

Deze vragenlijst bestaat uit een aantal vragen over verschillende onderwerpen (Kijken naar TV, de voetbalwedstrijd van Duitsland-Nederland 1974).

Bij sommige vragen wordt u gevraagd uw antwoord op te schrijven. Soms kunt u een kruisje zetten in een van de vakjes voor de antwoorden.

Wanneer u het woord ‘wedstrijd’ tegen komt verwijst dit naar de wedstrijd van Duitsland - Nederland in 1974.

1. Wat is uw leeftijd? … Jaar2. Wat is uw achtergrond? 3. Heeft u de wedstrijd Duitsland – Nederland gezien die gespeeld is tijdens het WK

van 1974? Ja Nee (ga naar vraag 5)

4. Hoe lang is dit geleden? < dan 1 maand < dan 1 jaar < dan 5 jaar Anders, namelijk: …

5. Weet u wat de uitslag van deze wedstrijd is? Ja, namelijk: Duitsland – Nederland: … - … Nee

6. In welke mate beschouwt u zichzelf als een lid van deze groep bekenden/vrienden?

Zeer zwak 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeer sterk

7. Hoeveel uur kijkt u gemiddeld naar de televisie per dag? 0 uur 5 tot 6 uur minder dan 1 uur 7 uur 1 tot 2 uur meer dan 7 uur 3 tot 4 uur

8. Met hoeveel mensen kijkt u meestal televisie? alleen ik en 4 personen ik en 1 persoon ik en 5 personen ik en 2 personen ik en meer dan 5, nl. ik en 3 personen

9. Naar wat voor een soort programma’s kijkt u het liefst met anderen? U kunt in totaal 100 punten verdelen over maximaal vier items. Schrijf de desbetreffende getallen in de daarvoor bestemde vakjes.

Nieuws en actualiteiten Sport Documentaire

Spelprogramma of quiz Film Serie

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Muziek Talkshow Anders, namelijk .........................

10. Met wie kijkt u graag samen televisie?

11. Welke aspecten van het samen televisie kijken zijn voor u belangrijk?

12. Naar wat voor een soort programma’s kijkt u liefst alleen? U kunt in totaal 100 punten verdelen over maximaal vier items. Schrijf de desbetreffende getallen in de daarvoorbestemde vakjes.

Nieuws en actualiteiten Sport Documentaire

Spelprogramma of quiz Film Serie

Muziek Talkshow Anders, namelijk .........................

13. Waarom kijkt u net alleen naar deze programma’s?

14. Maakt u wel eens gebruik van communicatie middelen tijdens het kijken naar de TV?Er zijn meerdere antwoorden mogelijk.

Nee Telefoon (gesprek) SMS functie van Mobile telefoon Webcam Chat programma op internet Email Anders, namelijk: …………………………

15. Zou u gebruik willen maken van communicatie middelen in de toekomst indien deze (goedkoop) beschikbaar zouden zijn?Er zijn meerdere antwoorden mogelijk.

Nee Telefoon (gesprek) SMS functie van mobile telefoon Webcam Chat programma op internet Email Anders, namelijk: …………………………

Dit is het einde van deze vragenlijst. U wordt nu naar de verschillende lokaties gebracht om naar de wedstrijd te kijken.

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After Controle/Sketch/Full condition questionnaire. Items in the Questionnaire that was administered after each condition during the experiment (instructions are included, space for answering is removed here). The questionnaire below is the questionnaire that was used for the group viewers in the sketch and full video conditions. Questionnaires have been adopted for the kind of viewer; single or group viewer. E.g. in the questionnaire for the group viewer the word friend is used whereas the questionnaire for the single viewer uses the word friends. Questions about the system or visualization are not present in the questionnaire that is administered after the control condition.

Concepts in the questionnaire: Items 1-12 measure the experience of the participants of social presence. It uses items from

the IPO-SPQ that are adopted specifically for this project. Items 16-27 measure social presence of the medium, these items come from the IPO-SPQ. Items 41-60 measure Group Attraction and are the translated items of the Group Attitude

Scale.

Op de volgende pagina’s vindt u een aantal vragen over de ervaring die u de afgelopen twintig minuten heeft gehad tijdens het kijken naar de wedstrijd.

Er zijn geen goede of foute antwoorden, het gaat om uw persoonlijke mening. Probeer niet te lang na te denken over de vragen,

maar probeer op uw eerste indruk of gevoel af te gaan ook wanneer sommige vragen ongebruikelijk overkomen.

Bij sommige vragen kunt u het getal omcirkelen dat het beste past bij uw beoordeling van

de sessie en de visualisatie (hetgeen u boven uw tv scherm gezien heeft). Soms wordt u gevraagd uw antwoord op te schrijven.

1. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel een duidelijk idee te krijgen van de activiteiten uw vriend?

Nooit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Altijd

2. Hoe vaak herkende u de activiteit van uw vriend?


3. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel dat u samen een activiteit (het samen kijken naar de wedstrijd) deelde met uw vriend?

Omcirkel bij elk van onderstaande vragen het getal dat het beste past bij uw persoonlijke beoordeling van de visualisatie of sessie als geheel.

De term ‘visualisatie’ verwijst steeds naar hetgeen u boven uw televisiescherm zag.

Het woord ‘vriend’ verwijst naar de persoon die zich tijdens de sessies niet in dezelfde ruimte bevind als u, tenzij anders vermeld.

Wanneer u het woord ‘reactie’ leest bedoel ik hiermee de verandering die u ziet in de visualisatie.

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4. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel dat u sociaal gezien samen was met uw vriend?


5. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel daadwerkelijk een ontmoeting te hebben met uw vriend?


6. Hoe vaak leek het alsof uw vriend en uzelf samen waren in dezelfde ruimte?


7. Hoe vaak had u de neiging om dichter bij uw vriend te gaan zitten?


8. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel te weinig informatie van u vriend te krijgen?


9. Hoe sterk was u bewust van de afwezigheid van uw vriend?


10. Hoe vaak was de reactie op spelmomenten van de ander toepasselijk?


11. Hoe vaak was er een duidelijke relatie tussen een bepaalde activiteit in de visualisatie en hetgeen er in de wedstrijd gebeurde?


12. Hoe vaak kwamen de reacties van uw vriend overeen met uw eigen reacties?


13. Had u het gevoel dat uw vriend buitengesloten was?


14. Had u het gevoel dat uw vriend zich alleen zou voelen?Nooit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Altijd

15. Hoe vaak had u het gevoel dat uw vriend echt bij de groep hoorde?Nooit 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Altijd

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16.Onpersoonlijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Persoonlijk

16.Ongevoelig 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gevoelig

17.Asociaal 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sociaal

18.Koud 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Warm

19.Doods 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Levendig

20.Saai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Interessant

21.Afstandelijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Dichtbij

22.Niet emotioneel

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Emotioneel

23.Onvriendelijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Vriendelijk

24.Ontoegankelijk

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Toegankelijk

25.Niet reactief 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Reactief

26.Onnatuurlijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Natuurlijk

27. Hoe spannend vond u dit deel van de wedstrijd?

Zeer saai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeer spannend

28. Vond u de interactie met elkaar via het systeem boeiend?

Zeer saai 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeer boeiend

29. Zorgde de visualisatie voor een negatieve afleiding van de wedstrijd?


Omcirkel bij elk van onderstaande vragen het getal dat het beste past bij uw persoonlijke beoordeling van de afgelopen sessie.

Nogmaals, denk niet te lang na over onderstaande vragen. Het is belangrijk dat u uw persoonlijke mening weergeeft.

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30. Voelde u zich bekeken?


31. Hoe vaak was uw aandacht gericht op de visualisatie?


32. Hoe vaak was uw aandacht gericht op het televisiescherm?


33. Hoe vaak was uw aandacht gericht op uw vrienden in dezelfde ruimte?


34. Zou u thuis gebruik willen maken van zo’n systeem als dat verkrijgbaar (en goedkoop) was?

Zeer zeker 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeer zeker niet

35. Kunt u uw keuze van de vorige vraag toelichten?

36. Wat vond u positief aan het systeem?

37. Wat vond u negatief aan het systeem?

38. Wat zou u willen veranderen aan het systeem?

39. Welke informatie over/van uw vriend/situatie miste u?

40. Ik wil lid blijven van deze groep.

Totaal mee eens

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Totaal niet mee eens

41. Ik mag mijn groep graag.

Totaal mee eens


42. Ik kijk er naar uit om naar de groep te gaan.

Totaal mee eens


43. Het kan mij niets schelen wat er in deze groep gebeurt.

Omcirkel bij elk van onderstaande vragen het getal dat het beste past bij uw gevoel over de hele groep wanneer u interactie heeft via de visualisatie van de afgelopen sessie.

Denk nogmaals aan de visualisatie die u net zag.

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Totaal mee eens


44. Ik voel me betrokken bij wat er in mijn groep gebeurt.

Totaal mee eens


45. Als ik nu kon afhaken, dan zou ik dat doen.

Totaal mee eens


46. Ik zie er tegenop om naar deze groep te komen.

Totaal mee eens


47. Ik wou dat het mogelijk was om de groep nu te beëindigen.

Totaal mee eens


48. Ik ben ontevreden met de groep.

Totaal mee eens


49. Als het op dit moment mogelijk was om naar een andere groep te gaan, dan zou ik dat doen.

Totaal mee eens


50. Ik voel me opgenomen in de groep.

Totaal mee eens


51. Ondanks individuele verschillen is er een gevoel van eenheid in mijn groep.

Totaal mee eens


52. Vergeleken met andere groepen die ik ken, vind ik dat mijn groep beter is dan de meeste andere.

Totaal mee eens


53. Ik voel mij geen deel van de activiteiten van de groep.

Totaal mee eens


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54. Ik heb het gevoel dat het uit zou maken voor de groep als ik hier niet was.

Totaal mee eens


55. Als mij verteld werd dat mijn groep vandaag bijeenkomt, dan zou ik me vervelend voelen.

Totaal mee eens


56. Ik voel me ver van de groep af staan.

Totaal mee eens


57. Het maakt mij wat uit wat er van deze groep wordt.

Totaal mee eens


58. Ik heb het gevoel dat mijn afwezigheid er voor de groep niet toe doen zou.

Totaal mee eens


59. Ik zou mij niet vervelend voelen als ik een bijeenkomst van deze groep zou moeten missen.

Totaal mee eens


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Items in the last Questionnaire that was administered after the experiment (instructions are included, space for answering is removed here).

Stelt u zich voor dat het makkelijk is om de twee visualisaties te veranderen naar uw wens en dat het makkelijk is om op de hoogte te blijven van de activiteiten van uw

naasten in verschillende situaties.

In dit geval heeft u bijvoorbeeld informatie (in verschillende mate van detail) gekregen over de bewegingen van uw vriend(en) terwijl u naar een voetbalwedstrijd op televisie

heeft gekeken.

Het idee om informatie over anderen te verschaffen kan ook op andere activiteiten/situaties/personen of soort informatie toegepast worden. Zo kunnen er verschillende activiteiten gekozen worden waarin mensen graag het gevoel hebben

dat ze samen zijn. Ook kan het zijn dat het voor u belangrijker is om dicht bij persoon x te zijn dan persoon y. Natuurlijk zijn er, afhankelijk van de situatie, verschillende

bronnen van informatie die belangrijk zijn voor u.We zijn geïnteresseerd in uw behoeften m.b.t. dit soort communicatie en proberen aan

de hand van deze vragenlijst wijzer te worden.

1. In onderstaande tabel staan een aantal factoren die een rol spelen in de visualisatie. Kunt u voor elk van deze factoren uw mening/suggesties geven? U kunt ook zelf aspecten aanvullen.

AspectSuggesties, meningen, opmerkingen…

Detail van de informatie van silhouettenVisualisatie gebaseerd op bewegingenAchtergrond kleur bij silhouetten

Plaats van de visualisatie (boven tv scherm).Snelheid van verandering van visualisatieInformatie over andere persoon op visuele manier gepresenteerd

2. Denkt u dat een systeem (waar u visuele informatie over de ander krijgt) de interactie op afstand met uw naasten zou kunnen verrijken?

Zeker niet 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zeker wel

3. Wat wilt u graag weten van andere personen in de context van het samen kijken naar de televisie?

4. Welke (huiselijke) activiteiten zou u graag samen willen doen met personen die zich op een andere locatie verkeren? Het is niet belangrijk of de techniek het mogelijk maakt, maar wat U graag zou

willen.

5. Met welke personen op andere locaties zou u graag het gevoel hebben dat u sociaal gezien samen bent?

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6. Welke aspecten tijdens de omgang met uw naasten op afstand zijn voor u belangrijk?

7. Heeft u opmerkingen of suggesties?

Dit is het einde van het experiment.Bedankt voor uw medewerking!

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