Not Really There: Understanding Embodied Communication Affordances in Team Perception and Participation

We conducted a study that compared basic video conferencing, emergent kinetic video-conferencing techniques, and face-to-face meetings. Remote and co-located participants worked together in groups of three. We show, in agreement with prior literature, the strong adverse impact of being remote on participation levels. We also show that local and remote participants perceived differently their own contributions and others'. Local participants exhibited significantly more overlapping talk with remote participants who used an embodied proxy, than with remote participants in basic-video conferencing (and at a rate similar to overlapping speech for co-located groups). We describe differences in how the technologies were used to follow conversation. Our findings indicate that while the kinetic embodied technology increased local participants' perceived presence of remote teammates, it did not enhance remote participants' own sense of telepresence. We discuss our findings in the context of theories of agency and presence, and discuss how these findings extend our understanding of the promise and limitations of embodied video-conferencing solutions.