Atsunobu Kimura

Visual feedback: its effect on teleconferencing

We present shared visual feedback for supporting conversations in contingent auditory environments like teleconferences. To facilitate the initiation of conversations in such environments, it is critical that the caller be able to grasp the auditory channel between the callers mouth and the receivers ear, and to vocalize at the voice level proper for the receiver. To achieve this goal, feedback of the voice level as measured at the receivers ear is needed. Our starting points were a first generation prototype that displays visual feedback on the callers screen and a second generation prototype that projects visual feedback onto the floor in the receivers room. To enhance the speakers assurance and to make installation easier, a third prototype is implemented as a LED device and a microphone. An experiment is conducted on the third prototype and its effectiveness in supporting natural conversations in telecommunication sessions in daily use environments is confirmed.

Stiction-Free Learning Method for Service Design Beginner

For people to become adapt in the methodology of Service Design, it is important that they achieve small but initial success which will encourage them to take the initiative in solving problems, before they learn skills and knowledge. However, books and instruction courses on Service Design focus on the learning of skills and knowledge, so beginners hesitate to apply Service Design freely. We propose 3 heuristic requirements for beginners to apply Service Design in practice and introduce the Stiction-free learning method in book-form. We evaluate the method and the results showed the effectiveness of our easy book-form, trouble check-sheet and verbalized implicit knowledge.

Ambient Pre-Communication

We present Ambient Pre-Communication for always-on tele-communication systems. It allows the Caller to feel more comfortable in initiating communication, as comfortable as in the real world. To start communication in the real world, determining the appropriate voice volume is essential. However, existing tele-communication systems fail to support the Caller in controlling voice volume because the systems don’t provide feedback of the Caller’s voice at the Receiver’s site. Our proposal allows existing tele-communication systems to provide visual feedback. The key idea is to superimpose a ripple-peak-meter, which represents the sound field at the Receiver’s site, on the Receiver’s video signal. The Caller can control his/her voice volume using the ripple-peak-meter. We describe a prototype system and experiments in which we observed the Caller’s response to the ripple-peak-meter display. The proposed method allows the Caller to easily grasp and control the volume of his/her voice at the Receiver’s site and encourages him/her in commencing tele-communication.