How coherent environments support remote gestures

Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of providing users with a coherent environment across distant sites. To date, it remains unclear how such an environment affects people's gestures and their comprehension. In this study, we investigate how a coherent environment across distant sites affects people's hand gestures when collaborating on physical tasks. We present video-mediated technology that provides distant users with a coherent environment in which they can freely gesture toward remote objects by the unmediated representations of hands. Using this system, we examine the values of a coherent environment by comparing remote collaboration on physical tasks in a fractured setting versus a coherent setting. The results indicate that a coherent environment facilitates gesturing toward remote objects and their use improves task performance. The results further suggest that a coherent environment improves the sense of copresence across distant sites and enables qui...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: AVI
• Authors: Naomi Yamashita, Keiji Hirata, Toshihiro Takada, Yasunori Harada
• Keywords: AVI 2008, Coherent Environment, Coherent Environment Facilitates, Distant Sites, Software Engineering