Hi, I'm Joanne Leong, and I'm happy to introduce our paper "Exploring the Use of Real-Time Camera
Filters on Embodiment and Creativity. With the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a large shift
towards digital communication. This has opened up a unique opportunity. As opposed to real-world
conversations, as we now have the ability to view ourselves in our interactions with others.
We conducted a survey with 174 respondents to understand people's experiences with these tools.
We noted that the majority of our respondents leave their camera on and occasionally watch
their self-view for a variety of reasons. From this, we saw an opportunity space emerge.
Alternate representations of ourselves can influence the way we feel
and behave. Through embodiment illusions using physical props or virtual reality,
changes to how we perceive our bodies can trigger new perspectives and even result in changes to
our cognitive performance. In line with this, the Proteus Effect points to the phenomenon
that digital self-representations can result in changes in behavior.
Therefore, in this paper, we explore whether the use of real-time virtual camera filters
can have similar effects. We conducted a remote user study with 21 participants over Zoom.
Participants experienced three conditions: a no-filter, child filter, and inventor-filter
condition. We explored whether seeing oneself during a video call in this manner
can trigger a sense of embodiment. change one's mood, and even boost creativity.
A study coordinator led participants through a sequence of activities under each condition.
In an orientation phase, participants were told to move, make different expressions,
and touch their shoulders and their head. This was inspired by visuo-motor and visuo-tactile
techniques which are often leveraged in VR to foster a sense of embodiment.
Following this, participants performed two creativity tasks.
The first was the alternate Uses Task where they had to think of unique and
unusual uses for a given object. We used SemDis to assign a creativity score to each response.
Secondly, participants completed a Verb Generation Task,
where they had to think of an unusual verb that could go with a given noun.
Latent Semantic Analysis with Word2Vec was used to assign a score to each response.
On average, our participants showed a slight increase in creativity
with the filters applied than without.
Additionally, we assessed participants' sense of embodiment
by having them rate their agreement with provided statements.
These were based on the standardized questionnaire proposed by Gonzalez-Franco and Peck.
The real camera image triggered higher degrees of embodiment, and even though no statistically
significant differences were found between the child- and inventor-filter conditions, the results
suggest that their individual designs may indeed influence the degree of embodiment felt by users.
Participants also rated their emotions. Generally, the child-filter scored lower on positive emotions
and higher for the feeling of shame. This suggests that the type of filter needs to be considered
in the design of such interventions, as they can trigger different moods.
Finally, participants were asked to openly comment on their experiences.
Interestingly, some people felt more self-conscious while others reported
that the filters felt like masks that liberated them from judgment. Another note is that some
people recognized that they look away while they're thinking. In comparison to the use of
head-mounted displays in VR, on-screen filter interventions may therefore be less immersive.
In the future, we would be interested in testing the impact of filters in groups
as we expect some effects to be amplified. Additionally, we would like to explore how
the strength of people's beliefs may impact real-time filter-based interventions.
Thank you for listening. Please read our paper for more details.