Description
Humans have a rich verbal and nonverbal language that allows us to communicate in powerful ways. Technology continues to play a significant role in enabling and enhancing the ways we communicate with each other when we are geographically separated. Machines capture our expressions and transmit them anywhere in the world for distant partners. But how expression is captured and how it is presented can have surprising effects on the way people communicate.
In this dissertation, I present background, designs, and evaluations of a new video conferencing system called MultiView which aims to improve the group-to-group video conferencing experience. I will (1) show the dependence of spatial information for the effective communication of nonverbal information such -- as eye contact -- and formalize the spatial shortcomings of modern video conferencing system design, (2) introduce a design based on a new multiple-perspective display to address these shortcomings, and (3) show that the MultiView design can effectively capture and present nonverbal cues in a natural way and that this new ability dramatically improves trust formation between remotely meeting groups.