Comparing flat and spherical displays in a trust scenario in avatar-mediated interaction

ABSTRACT

We report on two experiments that investigate the influence of display type and viewing angle on how people place their trust during avatar-mediated interaction. By monitoring advice seeking behavior, our first experiment demonstrates that if participants observe an avatar at an oblique viewing angle on a flat display, they are less able to discriminate between expert and non-expert advice than if they observe the avatar face-on. We then introduce a novel spherical display and a ray-traced rendering technique that can display an avatar that can be seen correctly from any viewing direction. We expect that a spherical display has advantages over a flat display because it better supports non-verbal cues, particularly gaze direction, since it presents a clear and undistorted viewing aspect at all angles. Our second experiment compares the spherical display to a flat display. Whilst participants can discriminate expert advice regardless of display, a negative bias towards the flat screen emerges at oblique viewing angles. This result emphasizes the ability of the spherical display to be viewed qualitatively similarly from all angles. Together the experiments demonstrate how trust can be altered depending on how one views the avatar.

References

1. Andrist, S., Pejsa, T., Mutlu, B., and Gleicher, M. Designing effective gaze mechanisms for virtual agents. In SIGCHI, ACM (2012), 705--714.
2. Bailenson, J. N., Yee, N., Merget, D., and Schroeder, R. The effect of behavioral realism and form realism of real-time avatar faces on verbal disclosure, nonverbal disclosure, emotion recognition, and copresence in dyadic interaction. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 15, 4 (2006), 359--372.
3. Barnett White, T. Consumer trust and advice acceptance: The moderating roles of benevolence, expertise, and negative emotions. JCP 15, 2 (2005), 141--148.
4. Bekkering, E., and Shim, J. Trust in videoconferencing. Commun. ACM 49, 7 (2006), 103--107.
5. Bickmore, T., and Cassell, J. Relational agents: a model and implementation of building user trust. In SIGCHI, ACM (2001), 396--403.
6. Bohannon, L. S., Herbert, A. M., Pelz, J. B., and Rantanen, E. M. Eye contact and video-mediated communication: A review. Displays (2012).
7. Bos, N., Olson, J., Gergle, D., Olson, G., and Wright, Z. Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development. In SIGCHI, ACM (2002), 135--140.
8. Chen, M. Leveraging the asymmetric sensitivity of eye contact for videoconference. In SIGCHI, ACM (2002).
9. Dawes, R. M. Social dilemmas. Annual review of psychology 31, 1 (1980), 169--193.
10. Desai, M., Tsui, K. M., Yanco, H. A., and Uhlik, C. Essential features of telepresence robots. In TePRA, IEEE (2011), 15--20.
11. Deutsch, M. Trust and suspicion. The Journal of conflict resolution 2, 4 (1958), 265--279.
12. Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Nickell, E., and Moore, R. J. Alone together?: exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games. In SIGCHI, ACM (2006), 407--416.
13. Grossman, T., and Balakrishnan, R. The design and evaluation of selection techniques for 3d volumetric displays. In UIST, ACM (2006), 3--12.
14. Horn, D. B., Karasik, L., and Olsen, J. S. The effects of spatial and temporal video distortion on lie detection performance. In SIGCHI, ACM (2002), 714--715.
15. Kim, K., Bolton, J., Girouard, A., Cooperstock, J., and Vertegaal, R. Telehuman: effects of 3d perspective on gaze and pose estimation with a life-size cylindrical telepresence pod. In SIGCHI, ACM (2012), 2531--2540.
16. Lincoln, P., Welch, G., Nashel, A., Ilie, A., Fuchs, H., et al. Animatronic shader lamps avatars. In ISMAR, IEEE (2009), 27--33.
17. Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., and Schoorman, F. D. An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of management review (1995), 709--734.
18. Nguyen, D., and Canny, J. Multiview: spatially faithful group video conferencing. In SIGCHI (2005), 799--808.
19. Nguyen, D. T., and Canny, J. Multiview: improving trust in group video conferencing through spatial faithfulness. In SIGCHI, ACM (2007), 1465--1474.
20. Okada, K., Maeda, F., Ichikawaa, Y., and Matsushita, Y. Multiparty videoconferencing at virtual social distance: Majic design. In CSCW (1994), 385--393.
21. Oyekoya, O., Steptoe, W., and Steed, A. Sphereavatar: a situated display to represent a remote collaborator. In SIGCHI, ACM (2012), 2551--2560.
22. Pan, Y., and Steed, A. Preserving gaze direction in teleconferencing using a camera array and a spherical display. In 3DTV-CON, 2012, IEEE (2012), 1--4.
23. Parker, S. G., Bigler, J., Dietrich, A., Friedrich, H., Hoberock, J., Luebke, D., McAllister, D., McGuire, M., Morley, K., Robison, A., et al. Optix: A general purpose ray tracing engine. TOG 29, 4 (2010), 66.
24. Rae, I., Takayama, L., and Mutlu, B. In-body experiences: Embodiment, control, and trust in robot-mediated communication. interaction 15, 28 (2013), 36.
25. Riegelsberger, J., Sasse, M. A., and McCarthy, J. D. The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design. IJHCS 62, 3 (2005), 381--422.
26. Riegelsberger, J., Sasse, M. A., and McCarthy, J. D. Rich media, poor judgement? a study of media effects on users trust in expertise. In People and Computers XIXThe Bigger Picture. Springer, 2006, 267--284.
27. Roberts, D., Wolff, R., Rae, J., Steed, A., Aspin, R., McIntyre, M., Pena, A., Oyekoya, O., and Steptoe, W. Communicating eye-gaze across a distance: Comparing an eye-gaze enabled immersive collaborative virtual environment, aligned video conferencing, and being together. In VR (2009), 135--142.
28. Sellen, A., Buxton, B., and Arnott, J. Using spatial cues to improve videoconferencing. In SIGCHI (1992), 651--652.
29. Steptoe, W., Steed, A., Rovira, A., and Rae, J. Lie tracking: social presence, truth and deception in avatar-mediated telecommunication. In SIGCHI, ACM (2010), 1039--1048.
30. Swol, L. M., and Sniezek, J. A. Factors affecting the acceptance of expert advice. British Journal of Social Psychology 44, 3 (2005), 443--461.
31. Teoh, C., Regenbrecht, H., and O'Hare, D. Investigating factors influencing trust in video-mediated communication. In OzCHI, ACM (2010), 312--319.
32. Vertegaal, R., Weevers, I., Sohn, C., and Cheung, C. Gaze-2: conveying eye contact in group video conferencing using eye-controlled camera direction. In SIGCHI (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 2003), 521--528.
33. Weise, T., Bouaziz, S., Li, H., and Pauly, M. Realtime performance-based facial animation. TOG 30, 77 (2011), 1--10.
34. Williams, E. Experimental comparisons of face-to-face and mediated communication: A review. Psychological Bulletin 84, 5 (1977), 963.
35. Yamashita, N., Hirata, K., Aoyagi, S., Kuzuoka, H., and Harada, Y. Impact of seating positions on group video communication. In CSCW, ACM (2008), 177--186.

Index Terms

• Information systems

  • Information systems applications

    • Multimedia information systems

  • World Wide Web

    • Web applications

      • Internet communications tools