Showing presence information on a live camera image

A live video of a room shows a kind of presence information of the member in the room. It can be used to facilitate casual communication among distributed group members. However, only a live video image is not enough because it does not show future and past information. Therefore, we designed and implemented the KokaCam system that visualizes presence information on a live camera image using comic techniques. KokaCam uses live camera images as a basis for representing virtual shared space for a small community. Presence information - activities of users - is visualized as 'Are', 'smokes', and effect lines, and superimposed at the seat of each member in the room, which makes easy to understand the mapping between presence information and the corresponding members. We have installed the KokaCam system at several dispersed rooms in our university as a communication tool, and evaluated it informally.