Research Article
SideBar: Videoconferencing System Supporting Social Engagement
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.collaboratecom.2014.257335, author={Morten Esbensen and Paolo Tell and Jakob Bardram}, title={SideBar: Videoconferencing System Supporting Social Engagement}, proceedings={10th IEEE International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing}, publisher={IEEE}, proceedings_a={COLLABORATECOM}, year={2014}, month={11}, keywords={sidebar videoconferencing social engagement}, doi={10.4108/icst.collaboratecom.2014.257335} }- Morten Esbensen
Paolo Tell
Jakob Bardram
Year: 2014
SideBar: Videoconferencing System Supporting Social Engagement
COLLABORATECOM
IEEE
DOI: 10.4108/icst.collaboratecom.2014.257335
Abstract
Companies are increasingly organizing work in globally distributed teams. A core challenge to these distributed teams is, however, to maintain social relationships due to limited opportunities and tools for social engagement. In this paper we present SideBar: a videoconferencing system that enhances virtual meetings by enabling social engagement. Through image analysis of the conference video feed, SideBar tracks meeting participants in real-time. A personal tablet then allows each participant to identify and track other participants, to look up information about them and their local work context, and to engage in peer-to-peer chat conversations. We describe the motivation, design and implementation of SideBar and report results from a preliminary evaluation, which shows that participants found SideBar useful and easy to use.
The paper concludes by providing three design guidelines for collaborative technologies supporting social engagement.