Experimental Assessment of an Emotion Tracking Software Agent (ETA) for assisting Communicative Interactions of Multitasking Users in Groupware

Interactions such as discussion and negotiation in face-to-face work contexts strongly rely on non-verbal feedback. Such feedback provides indications of important negotiation states such as agreement or disagreement and understanding or confusion. The increasing popularity of groupware and its use by virtual teams for collaborative remote work necessitates the development of appropriate tools to manage the reality of distributed and remote work. Such remote collaboration is often hampered by a lack of social cohesion and such phenomena as participant multi-tasking. This paper outlines the experimental assessment of a proof of concept AI based software agent (Emotion Tracking Agent or ETA) for the real-time tracking of groupware users facial expressions of emotion during virtual meetings. The software agent is designed as a novel approach to the removal of negative or unwanted effects of user multitasking and attention distracting behaviours in virtual collaboration and meeting environments.