There is a potential future where the content created by a human and an AI are indistinguishable. In this future, if you can’t tell the difference, does it matter? We conducted a 3 (Assigned creator: human, human with AI assistance, AI) by 4 (Context: news, travel, health, and jokes) mixed-design experiment where participants evaluated human-written content that was presented as created by a human, a human with AI assistance, or an AI. We found that participants felt more negatively about the content creator and were less satisfied when they thought AI was used, but assigned creator had no effect on content judgments. We also identified five interpretations for how participants thought AI use affected the content creation process. Our work suggests that informing users about AI use may not have the intended effect of helping consumers make content judgments and may instead damage the relationship between creators and followers.

An extensive body of work in visual analytics has examined how users conduct analyses in scientific and academic settings, identifying and categorizing user goals and the actions they undertake to achieve them. However, most of this work has studied the analysis process in simulated or isolated environments, leading to a gap in connecting these findings to large-scale business (enterprise) contexts, where visual analysis is most needed to make sense of the large amounts of data being generated. In this work, we conducted digital ”field” observations to understand how users conduct visual analyses in an enterprise setting, where they operate within a large ecosystem of systems and people. From these observations, we identified four common objectives, six recurring visual investigation patterns, and five emergent themes. We also performed a quantitative analysis of logs over 2530 user sessions from a second visual analysis product to validate that our patterns were not product-specific.

In this work, we explore how advances in augmented reality technologies are creating a new design space for long-distance telepresence communication through virtual avatars. Studies have shown that the relative size of a speaker has a significant impact on many aspects of human communication including perceived dominance and persuasiveness. Our system synchronizes the body pose of a remote user with a realistic, virtual human avatar visible to a local user wearing an augmented reality head-mounted display. We conducted a two-by-two (relative system size: equivalent vs. small; leader vs. follower), between participants study (N = 40) to investigate the effect of avatar size on the interactions between remote and local user. We found the equal-sized avatars to be significantly more influential than the small-sized avatars and that the small avatars commanded significantly less attention than the equal-sized avatars. Additionally, we found the assigned leadership role to significantly impact participant subjective satisfaction of the task outcome.

Telepresence robots offer a relatively new way for people to project their presence remotely. However, these experiences have only been studied in controlled or small scale installations. To broaden our understanding of the successes and limitations of telepresence robots in large-scale venues, we conducted a study at CHI 2016 where five factors increased over past research: (1) number of local attendees; (2) ratio of remote users to systems; (3) variety of activities; (4) time zone differences; and, (5) environment size. Our results reveal that unlike small-scale venues and situations, remote users take a more socially isolated and functional approach to remote attendance while combating challenges around scheduling and large navigational spaces. Our results reveal new opportunities for thinking about the design of robot personalization, availability, and navigation for systems targeted at large-scale public contexts.

Robotic telepresence systems-videoconferencing systems that allow a remote user to drive around in another location-are an emerging technology for supporting geographically-distributed teams. Thus far, many of these systems rely on affordances designed for stationary systems, such as a single, narrow-view camera to provide vision for the remote user. Teleoperation has offered some solutions to this via an augmented field-of-view, but how these solutions support task outcomes in collaborative mobile telepresence tasks has yet to be understood. To investigate this, we conducted a three condition (field-of-view: narrow (45°) vs. wide-angle (180°) vs. panoramic (360°)) between-participants controlled laboratory experiment. We asked participants (N=24) to collaborate with a confederate via a robotic telepresence system while using one of these views in a redecoration task. Our results showed that wider views supported task efficiency and fewer collisions, but were perceived as more difficult to use.

As a field, telepresence has grown to include a wide range of systems, from multi-view videoconferencing units to humanlike androids. However, the diversity of systems and research makes it difficult to form a holistic understanding of where the field stands. We propose a framework consisting of seven design dimensions for understanding telepresence, iteratively developed from previous literature, a series of three surveys, the construction of two design probes, and a field study. These design dimensions uniquely categorize 17 telepresence scenarios. In this work, we explain our development process, describe our design dimensions - initiation, physical environment, mobility, vision, social environment, communication, and independence - as well as our scenarios, and demonstrate the use of our framework as a tool to (1) highlight opportunities for future work, (2) identify generalizable findings from research, and (3) facilitate communication in the telepresence community.

Robotic telepresence systems - videoconferencing systems that allow a remote user to drive around in another location - provide an alternative to video-mediated communications as a way of interacting over distances. These systems, which are seeing increasing use in business and medical settings, are unique in their ability to grant the remote user the ability to maneuver in a distant location. While this mobility promises increased feelings of "being there" for remote users and thus greater support for task collaboration, whether these promises are borne out, providing benefits in task performance, is unknown. To better understand the role that mobility plays in shaping the remote user's sense of presence and its potential benefits, we conducted a two-by-two (system mobility: stationary vs. mobile; task demands for mobility: low vs. high) controlled laboratory experiment. We asked participants (N=40) to collaborate in a construction task with a confederate via a robotic telepresence system. Our results showed that mobility significantly increased the remote user's feelings of presence, particularly in tasks with high mobility requirements, but decreased task performance. Our findings highlight the positive effects of mobility on feelings of "being there," while illustrating the need to design support for effective use of mobility in high-mobility tasks.

Communication technologies are becoming increasingly diverse in form and functionality, making it important to identify which aspects of these technologies actually improve geographically distributed communication. Our study examines two potentially important aspects of communication technologies which appear in robot-mediated communication - physical embodiment and control of this embodiment. We studied the impact of physical embodiment and control upon interpersonal trust in a controlled laboratory experiment using three different videoconferencing settings: (1) a handheld tablet controlled by a local user, (2) an embodied system controlled by a local user, and (3) an embodied system controlled by a remote user (n = 29 dyads). We found that physical embodiment and control by the local user increased the amount of trust built between partners. These results suggest that both physical embodiment and control of the system influence interpersonal trust in mediated communication and have implications for future system designs.

As an emerging technology that enables geographically distributed work teams, mobile remote presence (MRP) systems present new opportunities for supporting effective team building and collaboration. MRP systems are physically embodied mobile videoconferencing systems that remote co-workers control. These systems allow remote users, pilots, to actively initiate conversations and to navigate throughout the local environment. To investigate ways of encouraging team-like behavior among local and remote co-workers, we conducted a 2 (visual framing: decoration vs. no decoration) x 2 (verbal framing: interdependent vs. independent performance scoring) between-participants study (n=40). We hypothesized that verbally framing the situation as interdependent and visually framing the MRP system to create a sense of self-extension would enhance group cohesion between the local and the pilot. We found that the interdependent framing was successful in producing more in-group oriented behaviors and, contrary to our predictions, visual framing of the MRP system weakened team cohesion.