Sharing Experiences over Video: Watching Video Programs together at a Distance

Abstract

Abstract. While video communication is becoming quite popular among remote friends and family, recent usage practices have been extending beyond just talking heads to remotely sharing an experience by doing an activity together. However, current video chat tools are aimed at sharing talking heads and need to be reconsidered to support remotely sharing activities. We explore a specific remote shared activity -watching video programs -through a threephase study. We surveyed people's interest in watching video together, studied how people currently watch together in their homes, and compared different conditions for watching together in the lab. Our work explored people's current and desired practices, interactions, and technical implementations. We present our findings in themes that provide insights for designing systems that better support using video-mediated communication to share watching videos together over distance. We found that remotely watching video programs together while connected by video-mediated communication is engaging, fun, and fosters social bonds between the participants, and that these results are stronger with increased fidelity of the communication media.

Multimedia document synchronization in a distributed social context

“…For example, within the research field of social television [3], enabling conversation between different households remains to be a core challenge. Still the benefits are clear, as recent research show that social bonds between remote viewers of video programs are fostered when providing videomediated communication [9]. According to this research, the fidelity of the communication media influences the overall experience, so the provision of adequate synchronization becomes a key issue.…”

Screen ecologies, multi-gaming and designing for different registers of engagement

“…Consequently, we contribute to earlier work by acknowledging the interplay between game design and technology. This paper also integrates with recent work in HCI that has begun considering how multiple frames of activity across screens and non-screens are being consumed by users, and the possibility of this as a resource for design [14,18]. As screens become more and more ubiquitous in the home, and the capacity for these devices to communicate is increased, the domestic screen ecology only looks to become more complex.…”

Challenges on the Journey to Co-Watching YouTube

“…Social interactions and collocated watching are an integral part of enjoying videos. According to Macaranas et al, 75% of people report watching video content with one or more people daily or weekly [20]. People have conversations during and after the video watching experience that enhance the appreciation for the video, and researchers have even developed systems which explicitly support audio conversation with remote video watchers [7].…”