Socially-Aware Interfaces for Supporting Collocated Interaction

One of the important challenges in ubiquitous computing is to improve the computer's access to information available in the social context. The goal of my PhD project is to investigate how to design interfaces that support collocated multi-users interactions taking into account users' nonverbal behaviour (specifically, gaze, postures, and body movements). In particular, the research activities are twofold: to understand which non-verbal cues and social signals reflect cooperation, engagement, and group cohesion in collocated group activities and to design systems that can handle and utilise this information. To this end, I present an integrated research approach for designing multi-user interactions based on the social signal processing approach. I also discuss the progress to date targeting the development of systems able to sense and react to social context.