ScoringTalk: a tablet system scoring and visualizing conversation for balancing of participation

Abstract

We present a tablet system providing real-time feedback to participants of face-to-face multi-party conversation on the scores of talking. In multi-party conversation, sometimes one speaks too much or too little and is a problem because we cannot obtain enough information. Our system has a game element to break through such a conversation. The system measures and visualizes the statistical profiles of conversation: who speaks to whom, who watches whom, and cumulative times of them by using front and back cameras of a tablet which each participant has. The system also calculates the participants' scores based on the rules of the game; the participant gets points when speaking and listening, and loses points when too much speaking. Therefore, the participants talk while trying maximize their scores, and it makes a balanced conversation. We evaluated the system in a within-subjects experiment, where five minutes of three-person conversation about a topic of software development and the system recorded the utterance of the participants. The results of experiments suggest that our system adequately balances the participants' utterance amounts.