The design of gaze behavior for embodied social interfaces

Non-verbal behavior, particularly gaze, is a crucial part of human communication. To interact with humans in a rich, natural way, social interfaces need to use this communicative channel effectively. While the role and mechanics of human gaze are extensively studied, how gaze might be used effectively by embodied interfaces is not well explored. The goal of my dissertation is to gain a deeper understanding of how gaze behavior affects people's interactions with embodied social interfaces and how we can design gaze for effective communication. This research focuses on four main social functions of gaze: Regulation, Expression, Establishing Joint Attention, and Initiating/Avoiding of Social Encounters and four sets of design variables: Temporal, Spatial, Physiological, and Contextual. A systematic study of how these functions and design variables affect each other is conducted through a series of empirical studies.