Making Media Spaces Useful: Video Support and Telepresence

Media spaces support remotely based cooperative activities and in some cases promote telepresence. Often, however, video use surrounding these systems has not been completely adequate or even appropriate for the tasks typically investigated. Research has primarily focused on “talking heads” video—video images of participants conversing face to face. Presently, the findings suggest that use of video in this way has limited application for supporting communication and cooperation. In contrast video has rarely been considered as a tool for sharing physical objects and workspace, even though video use in this form has enormous potential for exploiting media space. Furthermore, little is known about optimally configuring camera views and their presentation given the various uses of video conferencing. This paper describes observations of participants using media spaces, focusing on system aspects of the desktop video conferencing. Multiple camera views were manipulated and their presentation for negotiation and physical object assembly tasks. In two studies video was assessed for its value in face-to-face and workspace configurations. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effectiveness of the various equipment configurations for the selected tasks, including an examination of telepresence. Examples of both successes and failures of system efficacy are reported. Implications for future studies of media spaces, video conferencing systems, appropriate task contexts, and telepresence are discussed.