Proceedings of the Workshop on Environments for Personalized Information

A critical issue concerning communication between remote persons by means of videoconferencing is the ability of the system to provide a high degree of social presence. In this paper we describe the results of a comparative evaluation of two videoconferencing systems. One was a traditional one with a camera mounted above the display. Main disadvantage of such systems is that they do not convey direct eye contact. The key idea of the alternative Direct Eye Contact design is a combination of back-projection and mirroring techniques. This system gives participants on both sides the experience of having direct eye contact. It also provides a wide visual field with a life-size participant’s image and the illusion of a shared working table. The Direct Eye Contact system provided a significantly higher degree of social presence than the traditional one, as based on subjective, and especially behavioral measures, like body movements, facial expressions, eye fixation and gestures.