Research in sociology shows that effective conversation relates to people’s spatial and orientational relationship, namely the proxemics (distance, eye contact, synchrony) and the F-formation (orientation and arrangement). In this work, we introduce novel conversational paradigms that effects conventional F-formation by introducing the concept of multi-directional conversation. Multiplex Vision is a head-mounted device capable of providing a 360° field-of-view (FOV) and facilitating multi-user interaction multi-directionally, thereby providing novel methods on how people can interact with each other. We propose 3 possible new forms of interactions from our prototype: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. To facilitate them, we manipulate 2 key variables, which are the viewing parameter and the display parameter. To gather feedback for our system, we conducted a study to understand information transfer between various modes, as well as a user study on how different proposed paradigms effect conversation. Finally, we discuss present and future use cases that can benefit from our system.

Paper link here.