Not more than 5 years ago, Skype and Voip conversations were an opaque reality. Especially here where I am living now: Bella Italia. But habits and interactions change at an increasing pace and you hardly notice how fast your communications “evolve”.
My very first approach to the net has b een chatting and surfing on the web. I still remember my father showing me the potentialities of this new tool that he was not going to understand as I was. But I have never thought of how pervasive MSN would have become just few years later: exchanging msn contacts is the new way to be in touch with people you meet; it works even better than the ‘traditional’ phone number… probably because chatting is still perceived as less invasive.
Today my online conversations are held on MSN and Skype (I have been very impressed by the XMB, read Playstation 3 system interface, especially by the scenarios that online gaming are creating – like contacting friends while they’re playing). As probably most of you, I have my headset (even if I usually use my Ipod headphones – headsets make me feel a little bit…uncomfortable, like having a foreign body on your head) and an integrated webcam on my macbook (how annoying is when you have to plug it in your laptop?). In fact, I like to have video conversations – sometimes they are video+text w/o audio: in this way I preserve the comfort of chatting and an eye contact with your interlocutor.
The problem, or better, the situation I want to reflect on, is the very video-conference, where you see and voice talk with your interlocutor: have you ever tried to look her in the eyes while speaking? I think there is a big issue here ’cause of a separation between the webcam lens (where you have to look in order to make your interlocutor see you looking at her in the eyes) and the window where the image of the other person is represented. Most of conversations become annoying because of it and the communication is poor and lacking of important information (facial expressions, gestures – yeah, it’s a computer mediated communication but it can be richer).
Solutions? Well, if the distance between lens and interlocutor window could be reduced or even disappear, we would look in the eyes and get an immediate feedback of the interlocutor’s look\face expressions. At a concept level, I would think of a different position of the webcam itself: I would think of it as placed in the very display in order to be part of an interactive area where lens\focal point and feeback overlap. In this optic, it would then be connected to an input interface (keyboard?) that would control its position and settings.
The big issue I see here is how do we build a webcam into a display – how do we overcome the need of a sort of ‘hole’ for the placement of the lens. In fact, I immediately thought of a webcam behind the display…but what if we think of an overlapped cam that maybe is not built-in but can be activated only when needed, like a mask that goes on your display, not behind it.
