SISSI '10: Social interaction in spatially separated environments

Abstract

Social relationships between co-workers, family members and friends play an important role in our everyday lives. They are responsible for our well-being, for a productive working atmosphere and for feeling part of our various communities. Nevertheless, it can be difficult to establish and maintain such relationships if individuals are spatially separated, e. g. working in different branch offices of a corporation, as they usually cannot interact and communicate in a natural, everyday manner. In the past, significant effort has been put into the development of planned, explicit interaction methods such as email, chat or video-conferencing. In contrast to that, much less is known about techni..