Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Moving Phones, Active Peers: Exploring the Effect of Animated Phones as Facilitators in In-Person Group Discussion

Ziqi Pan, Ziqi Liu, Jinhan Zhang, Zeyu Huang, Xiaojuan Ma

TL;DR

This work investigates how animating personal smartphones to move expressively, without compromising regular functions, can transform them into active embodied facilitators for co-located group interaction and develops AnimaStand, a movement-enabled phone stand that animates phones to deliver group facilitation cues according to conversation dynamics.

Abstract

In today's in-person group discussions, smartphones are integrated as intelligent workstations; yet given their co-presence in such face-to-face interactions, whether and how they may enhance people's behavioral engagement with others remains underexplored. This work investigates how animating personal smartphones to move expressively, without compromising regular functions, can transform them into active embodied facilitators for co-located group interaction. In the four-stranger small-group discussion setting, guided by Tuckman's group-development theory, we conducted a design workshop (n=12) to identify problematic group-work circumstances and design expressive, attention-efficient animated phone facilitations. Subsequently, we developed AnimaStand, a movement-enabled phone stand that animates phones to deliver group facilitation cues according to conversation dynamics. In a between-subjects Wizard-of-Oz study (n=56) with four-stranger group discussions, where everyone's phone was on an AnimaStand, the facilitations re-engaged inactive members, enhancing group dynamics, task operation performance, and relationships. We finally discuss prospects for more adaptive and generalizable animated device personal facilitation.

Moving Phones, Active Peers: Exploring the Effect of Animated Phones as Facilitators in In-Person Group Discussion

TL;DR

This work investigates how animating personal smartphones to move expressively, without compromising regular functions, can transform them into active embodied facilitators for co-located group interaction and develops AnimaStand, a movement-enabled phone stand that animates phones to deliver group facilitation cues according to conversation dynamics.

Abstract

In today's in-person group discussions, smartphones are integrated as intelligent workstations; yet given their co-presence in such face-to-face interactions, whether and how they may enhance people's behavioral engagement with others remains underexplored. This work investigates how animating personal smartphones to move expressively, without compromising regular functions, can transform them into active embodied facilitators for co-located group interaction. In the four-stranger small-group discussion setting, guided by Tuckman's group-development theory, we conducted a design workshop (n=12) to identify problematic group-work circumstances and design expressive, attention-efficient animated phone facilitations. Subsequently, we developed AnimaStand, a movement-enabled phone stand that animates phones to deliver group facilitation cues according to conversation dynamics. In a between-subjects Wizard-of-Oz study (n=56) with four-stranger group discussions, where everyone's phone was on an AnimaStand, the facilitations re-engaged inactive members, enhancing group dynamics, task operation performance, and relationships. We finally discuss prospects for more adaptive and generalizable animated device personal facilitation.
Paper Structure (89 sections, 5 equations, 17 figures, 3 tables)

This paper contains 89 sections, 5 equations, 17 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Small-Group Development: Desired Goals, Challenges, and Facilitation Strategies
  4. Facilitating In-Person Group Interactions with Co-Present Devices
  5. Animating Devices with Proxemics and Metaphoric Movement Strategies for Collaborative Interaction Facilitation
  6. Proxemics
  7. Metaphoric Movement
  8. Designing Animated Phone Behaviors to Facilitate In-Person Small-Group Collaborative Discussion
  9. Workshop Probes
  10. Contextual Probe: Small-Group Development Stages, Challenges, and Goals in the Four-Person Roundtable Discussion Scenario
  11. Technical Probe: Movable Phone Stand with Controllable Lights Prototype
  12. Workshop Procedure
  13. Setup
  14. Participants and Procedure
  15. Data Analysis
  16. ...and 74 more sections

Figures (17)

  • Figure 1: Demonstration of the setup of the design workshop. A. an example of the shared worksheet where participants stick their brainstorms with the administrator taking notes; B. a scene from one session when the participants were illustrating their design to the administrator; C. the technical probe, a prototype of the tilted, movement-enabled phone stand.
  • Figure 2: Final design of animated phone facilitation behaviors across small-group development stages, showing circumstance types with qualitative identification rules, and facilitation designs with brief descriptions and figure demonstrations.
  • Figure 3: Overall workflow and demonstration of AnimaStand with online Slack workspace.
  • Figure 4: Implementation mapping from circumstance features to group development stages, circumstance types, and corresponding animated phone facilitation designs.
  • Figure 5: Control Panel. The panel consists of four main blocks: (1) real-time speaking time per participant, (2) speaker switches per pair in the last minute (the sum of two directions), (3) current evaluation with detected issues and recommended treatments, and (4) advanced control buttons for triggering facilitation behaviors. Together, these components allow the administrator to monitor group dynamics, review automated warnings and recommendations, and issue appropriate facilitation commands to the AnimaStand devices.
  • ...and 12 more figures