SideBar: Videoconferencing System Supporting Social Engagement

Companies are increasingly organizing work in globally distributed teams. A core challenge to these distributed teams is, however, to maintain social relationships due to limited opportunities and tools for social engagement. In this paper we present SIDEBAR: a videoconferencing system that enhances virtual meetings by enabling social engagement. Through image analysis of the conference video feed, SIDEBAR tracks meeting participants in real-time. A personal tablet then allows each participant to identify and track other participants, to look up information about them and their local work context, and to engage in peer-to-peer chat conversations. We describe the motivation, design and implementation of SIDEBAR and report results from a preliminary evaluation, which shows that participants found SIDEBAR useful and easy to use. The paper concludes by providing three design guidelines for collaborative technologies supporting social engagement.