The growing number of video chat users includes socially anxious people, but it is not known how video chat interfaces affect their interpersonal interactions. In our first study, we use a get-to-know-you task to show that when video feedback of oneself is disabled, higher social anxiety is associated with more public self-awareness, use of 2nd person pronouns, and experienced anxiety. Higher social anxiety was linked to discussing more topics, but discussing more topics only elicited higher self-disclosure and trust when social anxiety was low. In our second study, we assess these same effects using a presentation layout video chat interface and observe no effects of social anxiety on public self-awareness, 2nd person pronoun use, or number of topics discussed; no effect of feedback on experienced anxiety; and no link between number of topics and self-disclosure. Video chat adopters and designers should consider how feedback and interface layout affect conversations.

Video chat continues to play an increasing role in the personal and professional lives of many people. When meeting someone for the first time via video chat, traditional icebreakers such as discussion questions may be used to ease conversation and facilitate disclosure; however, icebreaker questions have been shown to be less effective at facilitating relationships for some people than others. In this paper, we propose synchronously sharing online media as a more flexible, robust, and effective method of facilitating initial interactions in video chat. Our comparative study of icebreaker questions and media sharing reveals that shared media supports a different style of conversation than icebreakers, but results in equal levels of self-disclosure and trust along with higher levels of warranting and relatedness. Further, while the effectiveness of icebreakers in building trust is lower for individuals low in agreeableness, media sharing results in similar trust formation at all levels of agreeableness. Synchronous media sharing is a promising way of leveraging the digital context of video chat to better support early stages of relationships.

Online social interactions in multiplayer games can be supportive and positive or toxic and harmful; however, few methods can easily assess interpersonal interaction quality in games. We use behavioural traces to predict affiliation between dyadic strangers, facilitated through their social interactions in an online gaming setting. We collected audio, video, in-game, and self-report data from 23 dyads, extracted 75 features, trained Random Forest and Support Vector Machine models, and evaluated their performance predicting binary (high/low) as well as continuous affiliation toward a partner. The models can predict both binary and continuous affiliation with up to 79.1% accuracy (F1) and 20.1% explained variance (R2) on unseen data, with features based on verbal communication demonstrating the highest potential. Our findings can inform the design of multiplayer games and game communities, and guide the development of systems for matchmaking and mitigating toxic behaviour in online games.

Video conferencing is often used to connect geographically distributed users and can be used to help them engage in a shared activity in a mobile setting for remote collaboration. One key limitation of today's systems however is that they typically only provide one camera view, which often requires users to hold a mobile phone during the activity. In this paper, we explore the opportunities and challenges of utilizing multiple cameras to create a hands-free, mobile, remote collaboration experience. Results from a study with 54 participants (18 groups of three) revealed that remote viewers could actively participate in an activity with the help of our system and that both the local participant and remote viewers preferred hands-free mode over traditional video conferencing. Our study also revealed insights on how remote viewers manage multiple camera views and showed how automation can improve the experience.

Video chat is a popular form of computer-mediated communication in a range of contexts from online job interviews to chatting with friends. Although seeing your own video feedback is the predominant interface design, self-awareness research suggests that seeing oneself could induce self-consciousness and affect interaction. We created a custom video chat application and asked pairs of strangers to engage in an online personal information exchange task with or without video feedback. Feedback increased self-awareness and the use of socially-focused words, and decreased the use of words expressing certainty. In addition, mixed-gender dyads rated themselves as more socially orientated with feedback than without, which was reflected in an increased use of inclusive pronouns and affiliation words, and fewer words expressing discrepancy. However, with feedback, same-gender dyads reported greater task orientation than mixed-gender dyads reflected in increased use of task-relevant words. We discuss design implications in contexts from remote therapy to online dating.

Live streaming services are a growing form of social media. Most live streaming platforms allow viewers to communicate with each other and the broadcaster via a text chat. However, interaction in a text chat does not work well with too many users. Existing techniques to make text chat work with a larger number of participants often limit who can participate or how much users can participate. In this paper, we describe a new design for a text chat system that allows more people to participate without overwhelming users with too many messages. Our design strategically limits the number of messages a user sees based on the concept of neighborhoods, and emphasizes important messages through upvoting. We present a study comparing our system to a chat system similar to those found in commercial streaming services. Results of the study indicate that the Conversational Circle system is easier to understand and interact with, while supporting community among viewers and highlighting important content for the streamer.

Crowdsourcing experiments online allows for low-cost data gathering with large participant pools; however, collecting data online does not give researchers access to certain metrics. For example, physiological measures such as heart rate (HR) can provide high-resolution data about the physical, emotional, and mental state of the participant. We investigate and characterize the feasibility of gathering HR from videos of online participants engaged in single user and social tasks. We show that room lighting, head motion, and network bandwidth influence measurement quality, but that instructing participants in good practices substantially improves measurement quality. Our work takes a step towards online physiological data collection.

Games are engaging in part because players experience competence from overcoming challenges. Although this process can feel frustrating, it is often experienced as a positive frustration that results in further engagement. Motivating frustration can be difficult to differentiate from the disheartening frustration that occurs when games are poorly designed or are much too difficult, yet understanding this difference is important for designers to make informed decisions on how to address player experience problems. We conducted an experiment to determine whether touch pressure from game interaction can differentiate between motivating in-game frustration and disheartening at-game frustration. Our results showed that although in-game and at-game frustration were of similar magnitude, enjoyment was higher and attribution was more internal for in-game frustration. Both peak pressure and mean pressure were also higher for in-game frustration, showing the potential of touch pressure as a game experience evaluation metric.

People using wheelchairs face barriers in their daily lives, many of which are created by people who surround them. Promoting positive attitudes towards persons with disabilities is an integral step in removing these barriers and improving their quality of life. In this context, persuasive games offer an opportunity of encouraging attitude change. We created a wheelchair-controlled persuasive game to study how embodied interaction can be applied to influence player attitudes over time. Our results show that the game intervention successfully raised awareness for challenges that people using wheelchairs face, and that embodied interaction is a more effective approach than traditional input in terms of retaining attitude change over time. Based on these findings, we provide design strategies for embodied interaction in persuasive games, and outline how our findings can be leveraged to help designers create effective persuasive experiences beyond games.

Game balancing can help players with different skill levels play multiplayer games together; however, little is known about how the balancing approach affects performance, experience, and self-esteem'especially when differences in player strength result from given abilities, rather than learned skill. We explore three balancing approaches in a dance game and show that the explicit approach commonly used in commercial games reduces self-esteem and feelings of relatedness in dyads, whereas hidden balancing improves self-esteem and reduces score differential without affecting game outcome. We apply our results in a second study with dyads where one player had a mobility disability and used a wheelchair. By making motion-based games accessible for people with different physical abilities, and by enabling people with mobility disabilities to compete on a par with able-bodied peers, we show how to provide empowering experiences through enjoyable games that have the potential to increase physical activity and self-esteem.