Social Presence in a Home Tele-Application

Abstract

The current paper presents a study on the subjective evaluation of an advanced telecommunication platform aimed at informal home use, called the PhotoShare tele-application. This platform enables users to view photos (e.g., family or holiday snapshots) together, while the presenter and the viewer are at different, remote locations. 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 remote sites. The study investigated the effects of videocommunication on social presence. In addition, the ability to point at a picture with an electronic pointer was evaluated. In the context of presence research, the current study also provided information regarding the validity of the IPO Social Presence Questionnaire (IPO-SPQ), which was specifically designed to investigate social presence with telecommunication applications. The results indicated that adding broadband, life-size video communication significantly increased social presence. In addition, we found a significant effect of sex on social presence: women gave substantially higher social presence ratings than men. The absence of a significant effect of the pointing function indicated that extensive workspace functionality may be of minor importance to the user's feeling of social presence.

Studying virtual worlds as medium for telepresence robots

“…The measurement device used was the IPO-Social [1]. A total of 20 participants, 8 female and 12 male with ages between 20 and 34, took part in the experiment.…”

The Impact of Collaborative Style on the Perception of 2D and 3D Videoconferencing Interfaces

“…This is in line with research by Wachter [26] who found that women feel more able to dominate the partner in a videoconferencing condition. Finally, deGreef et al [20] found a gender interaction in which a talking head video conveyed more social presence for female participants than for male participants.…”

“…The outcome of the collaboration was then measured in terms of the quality of the final design, as assessed by a jury of experts. Negotiation Short [12] Source -Seeker task Chapanis [3] Brainstorming Williams [49] Discussion Rutter and Stephenson [50] Discussion Rutter et al [51] Real project Tang [18] Collaborative Design Olson et al [5] InformerFollower task e f O'Malley et al [6] InformerFollower task g h Doherty-Sneddon et al [7] Decision making Daly-Jones et al [48] InformerFollower task Veinott et al [8] Discussion of photos de Greef and IJsselsteijn [20] InformerFollower task i j…”

“…Media that support more non-verbal communication channels are higher in social presence because they are typically perceived as warmer, more personal, more sociable, and more sensitive. Assessed in that way, social presence increased for example, when video was added to a groupware application that allowed remote participants to view and discuss photos [20]. Hauber et al [21] demonstrated that social presence of VMC can be further increased if a sense of spatiality is maintained in a remote encounter.…”

The impact of head movements on user involvement in mediated interaction

“…Basically social presence is the sense of facing remote people in a shared space, or in other word the degree of resembling face-to-face interaction (De Greef & Ijsselsteijn, 2001) .Successive generations of emerging networked interfaces have been designed to mediate remote social communication.…”