The mad hatter's cocktail party: a social mobile audio space supporting multiple simultaneous conversations

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a mobile audio space intended for use by gelled social groups. In face-to-face interactions in such social groups, conversational floors change frequently, e.g., two participants split off to form a new conversational floor, a participant moves from one conversational floor to another, etc. To date, audio spaces have provided little support for such dynamic regroupings of participants, either requiring that the participants explicitly specify with whom they wish to talk or simply presenting all participants as though they are in a single floor. By contrast, the audio space described here monitors participant behavior to identify conversational floors as they emerge. The system dynamically modifies the audio delivered to each participant to enhance the salience of the participants with whom they are currently conversing. We report a user study of the system, focusing on conversation analytic results.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.3 Communications Applications
          Subjects: Computer conferencing, teleconferencing, and videoconferencing

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Synchronous interaction

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
audio space, conversation analysis, floor management