The Beneficial and Harmful Effect of Videoconferencing

1. The Beneficial and Harmful Effect ofVideoconferencing Milton Chen, PhD Human Computer Interaction Lab Stanford University Presented at the 21st NORDUnet Network Conference 8/25/2003

2. The Stanford Video Auditorium

3. Accomplishments • Intel President Paul Otellini demonstrated vsee during his keynote at IDF • Candidate system for International Space Station • With Bob Bradford, MSFC • Featured Internet2 project to break video wall record • Attempt to see all 200 members of Internet2 simultaneously

4. Videoconferencing Solutions * At 30 fps on a 3 GHz Pentium 4

5. 1st Revolution: Possible 2nd Revolution: Ubiquitous first mobile phone, 1924 first handheld phone, 1973 first videophone, 1927

6. “We express ourselves into existence.” - Iris Murdoch Tyranny of real classrooms vsee A new hat

7. Eye contact stirs us to action [Sharbat Gula, photographed by McCurry ‘83]

8. Eye contact fires up our brain [Kampe et al. ’01 Nature]

9. Eye contact?

10. Sensitivity is asymmetric * 16 observers judged recorded videos of 1 looker

11. An anatomical explanation looking at you looking sideways looking up Illustrations from The Artist’s Guide to Facial Expression [Faigin ’90] eye closing looking down

12. “We shape our tools, and there after our tools shape us” - Marshal McLuhan Tyranny of real classrooms vsee A new hat 3:29 am

13. Why read lips • Improves comprehension • Background noise [Sumby and Pollack ’54] • Hearing loss [Binnie, Montgomery, Jackson ’86] [Yarbus ’67]

14. Audio ahead of the video • Videoconferencing • 1 msec to encode 30-msec audio with TrueSpeech • Up to 250 msec to encode a 720x480 frame with high-quality MPEG-4 • Detectable skew 130 msec [Dixon and Spitz ’80] 80 msec [Steinmetz ’96]

15. Conventional lip synchronization a, v a v sync decode decode network network encode encode time A A Audio delay line Unsynchronized delay skew

16. Attribute delay and skew to remote person a, v a v sync decode decode network network encode encode time A A Audio delay line Unsynchronized delay skew => person is slow? => person is not believable? • [Reeves and Nass ’96]

17. Perception of variable AV skew * 16 subjects judged recorded videos of 1 speaker

18. “The heart is stirred more slowly by the ear than by the eye.” – Horace Tyranny of real classrooms vsee A new hat 3:29 am To see or not to see

19. Benefit of video medium • Facilitate communication process • Stimulate interactivity when group is medium size • Support tasks that require complex collaboration • Negative feedback • Negotiation • Build relationship • Establish identity • Build trust • Form friendship

20. Harmful effect of video • Time and resource sink • Make user look bad • Gaze less potent => are you ignoring me? • Gesture less potent => am I not interesting? • Slow response => user is slow? • Lack of lip sync => user is not believable? • Lack of eye contact => user is not motivated?[Reeves and Nass ’96]

21. What is a videophone A plane that does not fly is not a plane First flight, Wrights 1903 A videophone that limits communication is not a videophone

22. Summary • VSee • Findings on eye contact and lip sync • Poor video can be worse than no video

23. Acknowledgement • Prof. Ebba Hvannberg • Prof. Pat Hanrahan and Terry Winograd • Prof. Cliff Nass, Tom Moran, Anoop Gupta • I would love to hear from you! • http://vsee.stanford.edu • Collaborate on the Internet2 demo?