Exploring Privacy and Trust Issues in a Future Immersive Videoconferencing System

Existing standard videoconferencing tools have failed in creating an experience equal to formal face-to-face meetings. In an effort to overcome this challenge, ICOCOON was developed to create an immersive meeting experience. In its current state this videoconferencing tool displays video streams of all participants and a Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) portraying participants as avatars around one table. To create an effortless meeting experience in the immersive environment, the Virtual Director (VD) translates behaviors such as speaking and raising one's hand from the video stream to the VMR with the help of smart software. However, when delegating power to technology, privacy concerns arise. By creating a video prototype of the tool, we probed and discussed topics such as privacy and trust in technology. We found that users trade off their privacy concerns with benefits of using the proposed technology. To illustrate this trade-off, we extended an existing privacy perception model.