Don't Look at the Camera: Achieving Perceived Eye Contact
This addresses a practical issue for video communication users by improving the perception of eye contact, though it is incremental as it builds on conventional wisdom.
The study tackled the problem of achieving perceived eye contact in video calls by investigating where subjects should direct their gaze relative to a camera lens, finding through empirical user studies that looking just below the camera lens is preferable to looking directly into it.
We consider the question of how to best achieve the perception of eye contact when a person is captured by camera and then rendered on a 2D display. For single subjects photographed by a camera, conventional wisdom tells us that looking directly into the camera achieves eye contact. Through empirical user studies, we show that it is instead preferable to {\em look just below the camera lens}. We quantitatively assess where subjects should direct their gaze relative to a camera lens to optimize the perception that they are making eye contact.