Talking in circles: designing a spatially-grounded audioconferencing environment

This paper presents Talking in Circles, a multimodal audioconferencing environment whose novel design emphasizes spatial grounding with the aim of supporting naturalistic group interaction behaviors. Participants communicate primarily by speech and are represented as colored circles in a two-dimensional space. Behaviors such as subgroup conversations and social navigation are supported through circle mobility as mediated by the environment and the crowd and distance-based attenuation of the audio. The circles serve as platforms for the display of identity, presence and activity: graphics are synchronized to participants’ speech to aid in speech-source identification and participants can sketch in their circle, allowing a pictorial and gestural channel to complement the audio. We note user experiences through informal studies as well as design challenges we have faced in the creation of a rich environment for computer-mediated communication.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Roy Rodenstein, Judith S. Donath
• Keywords: CHI 2000, Circles, Group Interaction Behaviors, Human Computer Interaction, Multimodal Audioconferencing Environment