Relational Cockpit

Recently, the observation that socially inappropriate behavior during meetings may result in suboptimal group performance inspired researchers to develop systems that monitor and give feedback on social dynamics [3, 6, 12, 13]. These systems capture observable properties of the meeting participants, such as speaking time, posture, and gestures, analyze the interaction of people, and give feedback by offering visualizations of the social data. In [3], for instance, a wide range of vocal features, aspects of body language, and physiological signals is measured to calculate a behavior-based index of group interest, which is then shown to the participants on either a private or a public display. In [6], feedback is provided about the speaking time of different participants, visualized through a histogram presented on a public display. Evaluations showed that real-time feedback on speaking activity can result in more equal participation of all meeting members