Hello, my name is Clayton.
And I recently completed my Bachelors in Computer Science
at Pomona College.
I am very excited to present our research
on the Effects of Shared Gaze on Audio Versus Text-Based Remote
Collaborations.
I conducted this work with five other undergraduate students
at Pomona and our advisor Alexander Papoutsaki.
Today, remote collaboration is an essential part
of the professional landscape.
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic,
remote work became overnight a crucial measure
of public safety.
In the spring of 2020, 34% of US employees who used to commute
started working from home.
Even before the pandemic, a COBOL survey
showed that 50% of employees worked
outside their main office at least 2 and 1/2 days per week.
This dramatic shift in the modern workplace
has been supported by collaborative applications
on platforms like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive,
which are paired with synchronous media,
such as instant messaging on Slack
and voice and video conferencing on Zoom.
Nevertheless, remote collaborators
still face unique and longstanding challenges,
such as lack of common ground, implicit cues, and task
awareness, which can severely impact the quality and outcome
of their collaboration.
Recently, dual eye tracking technology
has been explored as a novel way of enhancing
remote synchronous communication through Shared Gaze.
Shared Gaze allows collaborators to see
each other's point of gaze visualize on their own screen.
Shared Gaze has been shown to lead to better collaboration
performance, and increased levels of mutual understanding,
and joined the tension in diverse settings.
However, gaze sharing has only been
studying in settings with audio or gaze only communication.
This is an important omission as text-based media
are used in environments where voice communication is not
suitable, such as in open plan environments
or in locations with lower internet bandwidth.
Our work aims to fill this gap by exploring
how the combination of traditional media,
such as voice conferencing and instant messaging.
And the visualization of Shared Gaze
influences collaboration performance.
We conducted a within subjects experiment
where 24 pairs of participants had
to collaborate to solve four different mysteries.
Each mystery was completed under a different condition.
Voice where the communication was achieved
by a voice conferencing.
Voice plus gaze, where we added the visualization
of Shared Gaze.
Text, where collaborators communicated
via instant messaging.
And finally, text plus gaze, which again
added the visualization of Shared Gaze.
For each task, participants were provided
with an image of the crime scene, a police
report, and profiles for each of the three suspects.
And had to solve the mystery within 10 minutes.
Some of the clues were shared while others
were unique for each participant and
critical to the successful identification of the suspect.
During the text-based communication,
Shared Gaze had a positive effect on task correctness.
Similar improvements observed during
the voice-based communication agree with prior studies.
However, the completion time was improved only
for audio-based communication.
This finding indicates that Shared Gaze
induced qualitative changes in the text-based collaboration
process rather than simply facilitating it.
Gaze sharing also let parents to look and talk more often
about the shared content on their screens
regardless of the primary signal of communication.
We're looking at the exchanges between participants
during the text plus gaze condition.
We find the joint attention and referral
to shared visual elements are indeed increased,
as exemplified by this exchange of messages.
We also looked at the way the participants
perceived their collaboration through a series
of questionnaires and interview questions.
Measures such as perceived joint attention,
flow of communication, and awareness
of the partners activity slightly increased
during text plus gaze.
However, the perceived cognitive workload
was exacerbated during text-based collaboration.
This was also reflected in our post study interviews
with participants overall preferring Shared Gaze
when coupled with voice-based communication.
Overall, our work presents the first study
on Shared Gaze that focuses on text-based communication.
We highlight how shared case affects differently
both objective and subjective measures
during audio versus text-based communication.
In the paper, we also discuss implications
for future remote collaboration tools in mobile settings.
With that, I would like to thank you for your attention,
and I would be happy to take any questions.