MultiView is a new video conferencing system that supports collaboration between remote groups of people. MultiView accomplishes this by being spatially faithful. As a result, MultiView preserves a myriad of nonverbal cues ? such as gaze and gesture ? in a way that should improve communication. Previous systems fail to support many of these cues because a single camera perspective warps spatial characteristics in group-to-group meetings. We present a formal definition of spatial faithfulness. We then apply a metaphor-based design methodology to help us specify and evaluate MultiView's support of spatial faithfulness. As part of the MultiView design, we introduce a new design for a new multiple-viewpoint display. We then present results from a low-level user study to measure MultiView's effectiveness at conveying gaze and gesture perception. MultiView is the first practical solution for spatially faithful group-to-group conferencing, one of the most common applications of vid...
David T. Nguyen, John F. Canny