Making It Personal

Abstract

Public-speaking situations such as classroom lectures, seminars, and meetings, where speakers must actively engage the audience, require considerable effort from the speaker in gathering verbal and non-verbal feedback from the audience. Garnering feedback can be made easier by technologies such as augmented reality (AR) capable of displaying information in 3D space surrounding the speaker. We present an AR-enabled presentation display system to provide real-time feedback from the audience to the speaker during a presentation. The feedback includes names and affective states of the audience, icons requesting a change in volume and rate of speech, and annotated questions and comments. The design of the feedback system was informed by findings from an exploratory study with academic professionals experienced in delivering presentations. In a between-subjects study, we evaluated presentations displaying feedback information spatially overlaid above the heads of the audience members in one condition and in the periphery of the presenter's view in another condition, as compared with a no-AR control condition. Results showed that the presenters in the overlay condition called upon the audience by name significantly more often than in the peripheral and the control conditions, and they rated the overlay condition as more reliable, helpful, and wanting to use it for future presentations compared to the peripheral condition. Overall, AR feedback was considered useful by both the presenters and the audience and did not negatively impact speaker confidence and state anxiety of the presenter.