Hello everyone, I am Erzhen from the University of Virginia.
Today I would like to introduce our work Fluidmeet
Enabling Frictionless Transitions Between In-Group,
Between-Group,
and Private Conversations
During Virtual Breakout Meetings.
This is a joint effort with
my amazing colleague Aashik Azim
and my wonderful advisor Seongkook Heo.
Breakout meeting is a type of meetings
where small conversation groups are formed
and their members are quickly exchanged.
Many events and programs such as
poster sessions,
workshops,
and lectures use breakout sessions
to facilitate ad-hoc and informal conversations.
There are many types of conversations during these meetings.
For example, in-group members may whisper to each other.
They may also overhear, follow the other group’s conversation, and choose to join one.
But what about virtual meetings?
There are fewer informal conversations during these meetings,\h
because what you say
would be broadcasted to the whole group.
You cannot know the context of the conversation
of other breakout rooms.
The transition and boundaries of these meetings
are much more static.
Proximity-based systems such as Gather Town may solve this
by enabling people to jump into groups
when close to each other.
However, it creates high friction
with additional transition efforts for users.
For example,
these two users may want to have private conversations,
but they will need to move far away
from the current group to have it.
Moreover, before joining other groups,
newcomers may feel hesitant to participate
without any conversation context.
So, although Gather provides awareness in some sense,
like the orientation and movements of avatars,
it cannot provide enough level of awareness,
for the current conversation context.
Hence, our goal is to\henhance awareness
and support fewer transition efforts between conversations.
Since it is nearly impossible to imitate the physical encounter,
We instead, focus on implementing the key features that
support these properties of conversation dynamics.
Let me explain how we designed the Fluidmeet system.
To understand how people utilize the distances in conversations,
we reviewed the theories of human-human interaction.
Based on these theories, we constructed three design properties:
Interpersonal Distances,
Cross-Group Distances,
and Privacy-Interaction Flexibility.\h
So let’s start with the first one (interpersonal distances).
In the physical environment,
people may construct different distances,
so-called proxemic theories,
which can be intimate distances
that allow for touch or whispers,
personal distances that
we naturally maintain with strangers, and\h
social distances
where we can catch each other’s gaze.
We suggest forming a nested conversation structure,
where users can have their private conversations
within the group conversation
to facilitate one-to-one connections.\h
Here’s how we enable it.
when a user initiates a private message
to a member in the same group,
the messages and calls are visualized as colored bubbles
called Halos
in the corners of the receiver’s video streams.
The Halo is visible and with short messages on it.
In this case, two of the users move closer to the user
at the personal distance (from the social distance).
This scene also shows that users can flexibly transit
from personal to intimate distances.
When users get a private call request,
they can either reply to the message,
or select the camera button on Halo
to start the private call.
In both users’ views,
there’s an indicator showing that two users are in a private call.
Other users can see frozen video of the two users
in the private call.
Moreover, when two users are in a private talk,
a user can use the Switch Handler
to switch the mode back to the group conversation
without stopping the current private call.
This shows a fluid transition
between the social distances and the intimate distances.
Now we’ve seen what’s happening in the within-group dimensions.
Before joining the group,
people may overhear some split words or
find something of interest to them.
How can we enable these
between-group interactions?
Here comes our second design property:
Cross-Group Distances.
In co-present activities,
people often orient themselves in different spatial arrangements,
so-called F-formations.
These arrangements can be categorized
into either closed or open arrangements.
People tend to use open arrangements to send a message to others
whether they’re open (or available) to them joining or not.
However, the protected space of F-formation
does not consider the group’s
immediate environment.
There is a C space that allows the outstander
to get the context of the group,
and allows the group to show
their readiness for conversation to the out-group members.
Similar to the use of C-space in the real world,
an outsider closer to the group
will have more awareness of the group discussion.
The group can decide how much information
out-group members can monitor or perceive from the group
with five-level conceptual distances on Room Panels,
which are Locked,
Atmosphere,
Word Cloud,
Live Stream,
and Public
on the top of the FluidMeet user interface.
Moreover, we enable a\hRoom Controller\h
to support the transition between
these five (cross-group) distances.\h
The outgroup user can also request levels from the group.
In this scene, Aashik requests live streaming
to the Classroom [Room Name]
from the menu on the Room Panel.
The request will be shown as a Red Grid
on the Room Controller.
And with the group’s approval,
Aashik can see the Live Stream from the Classroom.
As I explained,
our system allows people to utilize
Interpersonal Distances and Cross-Group Distances.
But, in the real world,
these changes and transitions are dynamic and subtle.
So it’s not something that can be set as a static value
because people’s needs change by
context, time, members, and many other factors.
This has been identified by Altman
as the privacy regulation theory.
In his study, he defined privacy as a dynamic boundary regulation process.
And people need to change it frequently as context changes.
So here comes our third design property:
Privacy-Interaction Flexibility.
For example, FluidMeet features
such as the Room Controller (mentioned before) are designed
to support the efficient and dynamic control
between privacy and group interaction.
We conducted a user study
with 16 participants
comparing Zoom Breakout Room with FluidMeet
to study\hwhether FluidMeet enhances awareness
and eases transitions
between (different) conversation modes
and to understand the user experience of using it.\h
Our study found that\h
With FluidMeet, the enhanced presence
of others’ activities (the still image and the text indicator)
offers the transparency of their activity
and provides a sense of connectivity.
The Cross-Group Distances on the Room Panel
imply a conversation potential for out-group members,
with the richness of information sources and awareness.
Users also reported that
FluidMeet reduce the extensive manual and mental effort of
switching between breakout rooms with uncertainty
The room privacy management
can help control the group size
and maintain the efficiency of in-group “information exchange.”
In summary,
instead of imitating physical spatial relationships,
we use the\hconceptual distances\h
to optimize the design to enhance awareness with less friction.
With that, I will conclude my presentation.
Thanks very much for your attention.
[We welcome your questions!]