Social presence in a home tele-application.

The current paper presents a study on the subjective evaluation of an advanced telecommunication platform aimed at informal home use, called the PhotoShare tele-application. This platform enables users to view photos (e.g., family or holiday snapshots) together, while the presenter and the viewer are at different, remote locations. The platform includes a common viewing space where the photos are displayed and selected, as well as an audio connection and a large-screen video connection for communication between the remote sites. The study investigated the effects of videocommunication on social presence. In addition, the ability to point at a picture with an electronic pointer was evaluated. In the context of presence research, the current study also provided information regarding the validity of the IPO Social Presence Questionnaire (IPO-SPQ), which was specifically designed to investigate social presence with telecommunication applications. The results indicated that adding broadband, life-size video communication significantly increased social presence. In addition, we found a significant effect of sex on social presence: women gave substantially higher social presence ratings than men. The absence of a significant effect of the pointing function indicated that extensive workspace functionality may be of minor importance to the user's feeling of social presence.