Social Presence Awareness Visualization in a Collaborative Videogame

Abstract

The awareness information in collaborative systems supports the interaction between people. However, traditional awareness systems are limited to mechanisms that display data often isolated from the context of social interaction and do not fully reflect the individual relevance of a person (social presence) in the collaborative activity. Therefore, proposing more dynamic and efficient tools to facilitate the acquisition and presentation of social presence information is convenient. This research proposes a social presence visualization system and its conceptual architecture and develops a user-centered prototype. The prototype integrates functions that let the user select different representations of social presence (pictogram, bar chart, donut chart, and radial). We used the prototype in a collaborative video game (AssaultCube-CX) to study the effects of social presence visualization on users’ performance. We studied the social presence of 12 Mexican volunteers by recording their activities during the tests to analyze their social presence. The social presence quantitative analysis indicates that the visualization of social presence during the collaborative activity increase awareness of social presence and improves team performance in most cases.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Teresa Cepero

Maria Teresa Cepero has a Master’s Degree in User-Centered Interactive Systems from the Universidad Veracruzana. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science from the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. Her areas of interest are: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Human-Computer Interaction, Data visualization and Smart Cities.

Luis G. Montané-Jiménez

Luis G. Montané-Jiménez PhD in Computer Science graduated from the University of Veracruz (UV) in Mexico, with a master’s degree in Applied Computing. He is full-time professor with the Faculty of the Statistics and Computer Science of the UV. His research interests are the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction.

Guadalupe Toledo-Toledo

Guadalupe Toledo-Toledo Research professor at the University of the Isthmus, master in computer applied by the national laboratory of advanced computer science in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, his areas of interest are in software development involving disciplines such as software engineering, human computer interaction, virtual and augmented reality, data mining, databases, artificial intelligence.

Betania Hernández-Ocaña

Betania Hernández-Ocaña Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, México, in 2016. She is currently a Research Professor with the División Académica de Informática y Sistemas, Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, México. Her areas of interest are related to swarm intelligence algorithms and evolutionary, global optimization, and constraint-handling.

Carlos Alberto Ochoa

Carlos Alberto Ochoa Degree in Computer Science from the Universidad Veracruzana, with a master’s degree in Computer Science from the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation. With current recognition of prodep profile. With certification in Networks by Microsoft. Professional experience in the area of Servers and experience in university management.