Video conferences play a vital role in our daily lives. However, many nonverbal cues are missing, including gaze and spatial information. We introduce LookAtChat, a web-based video conferencing system, which empowers remote users to identify gaze awareness and spatial relationships in small-group conversations. Leveraging real-time eye-tracking technology available with ordinary webcams, LookAtChat tracks each user's gaze direction, identifies who is looking at whom, and provides corresponding spatial cues. Informed by formative interviews with 5 participants who regularly use videoconferencing software, we explored the design space of gaze visualization in both 2D and 3D layouts. We further conducted an exploratory user study (N=20) to evaluate LookAtChat in three conditions: baseline layout, 2D directional layout, and 3D perspective layout. Our findings demonstrate how LookAtChat engages participants in small-group conversations, how gaze and spatial information improve conversation quality, and the potential benefits and challenges to incorporating gaze awareness visualization into existing videoconferencing systems.

翻译：视频会议在我们的日常生活中发挥着至关重要的作用。 然而,许多非语言提示,包括视觉和空间信息,都缺少。我们引入了LookAtChat,这是一个基于网络的视频会议系统,它使远程用户能够在小群体对话中识别目视意识和空间关系。利用普通网络摄像头提供的实时眼视跟踪技术,LookAtChat跟踪每个用户的视觉方向,确定谁在看谁,并提供相应的空间提示。通过与定期使用视频会议软件的5名参与者的编造式访谈,我们探索了2D和3D布局的视觉视觉化设计空间。我们进一步进行了探索性用户研究(N=20),以在三个条件下评估LookAtChat:基线布局、2D方向布局和3D视角布局。我们的研究结果表明LookAtChat如何让参与者参与小群体对话,如何提高视觉和空间信息的对话质量,以及将视觉意识可视化纳入现有视频会议系统的潜在好处和挑战。