Engagement and Quality of Experience in Remote Business Meetings: A Social VR Study

Currently, most videoconferencing technologies do not keep employees sufficiently engaged during business meetings. Recent studies have shown how extended reality (XR) technologies can help in executing remote meetings in new and possibly better ways. One important factor for meetings in e.g. Virtual Reality (VR) is avatar realism, with the...

Virtual Visits: Life-size Immersive Communication

Elderly people in care homes face a great lack of contact with their families and loved ones. Social isolation and loneliness are detrimental factors for older people in their health condition, cognitive impairment and quality of life. We previously presented a communication system that facilitated high-quality mediated social contact through an...

Communication via warm haptic interfaces does not increase social warmth

Affective haptic interfaces are designed to influence one’s emotional and physiological state via the sense of touch, and may be applied as communication media to increase the sense of closeness. Recent research suggests that stimulation with physical warmth can enhance this interpersonal closeness: a physical-social warmth link. It is often...

A warm touch of affect?

One of the research areas within affective Computer Mediated Communication currently under investigation is that of mediated social touch. A social touch is a complex composition of different physical parameters that can be simulated by haptic technologies. In this article we argue why we think it makes sense to incorporate warmth - and in...

Warmth in affective mediated interaction: Exploring the effects of physical warmth on interpersonal warmth

Recent research suggests that physical warmth activates perceptions of metaphorical interpersonal warmth and closeness, and increases pro-social behavior. These effects are grounded in our earliest intimate experiences: being held by our loving caregivers. These findings provide reasons to incorporate warmth in devices for distant affective...

Reviewing the Role of Media Attributes in Mobilizing Protest Participation

Activist groups increasingly use computer-mediated communication (CMC) channels to mobilize large groups of consumers to persuade incumbent firms to change their contested strategies or practices. The attributes of CMC channels change the effectiveness of persuasion processes in organizations. Similarly, attributes may change the effectiveness...