ExciTube
Video Player for Sharing Viewer’s Excitement
Takumi Shirokura, Nagisa Munekata and Tetsuo Ono
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University N14-W9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Japan
Keywords: Video Player, Virtual Reality, Physiological Computing, Entertainment Computing, User Experience.
Abstract: We can share non-verbal emotional experiences, such as excitement and pleasure, by watching movies and
sports events with others, like our friends and family. These shared experiences are thought to enhance
excitement and pleasure compared to when watching videos alone. Our research provides this shared
experience on the internet by sharing the viewer's excitement with others while watching videos that are on
the web. We studied the relationship between users’ excitement while watching videos on the web and their
impressions of those videos. Here, we introduce a video player called ExciTube that allows users to share
their excitement and view other users’ excitement as visual information alongside the video they are
watching. The user’s excitement is expressed and shared by using avatars. We carried out user-involved
demonstrations of ExciTube at our laboratory and at a Japanese domestic Computer Entertainment
Developers Conference, and confirmed that people did enjoy using the system and felt other people’s sense
of excitement.
1 INTRODUCTION
We have all watched movies, sports events, and
videos with family or friends. This experience is
stronger than when watching videos alone because
we can share our excitement and impressions. We
can engage with those we are watching videos with
through sharing emotions. However, it is difficult for
people who live in remote places to do this because
viewers need to gather at one location.
However, we can easily communicate on the
subject of videos with friends through comments and
positive/negative icons on online video sites, such as
YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/), Vimeo
(https://vimeo.com/) and NicoNico
(http://www.niconico.com/). These services only
have conscious information, such as text and icons,
to represent users’ impressions. However, there are
many reactions such as unconscious non-verbal
information caused by watching videos together
with friends that is spread among viewers in the real
world. Comments and positive/negative icons are
important content on most online video websites that
represent users’ evaluations of videos. These
comments, though, may contain untrue information
because viewers leave them consciously, or they are
left multiple times by one viewer. We feel and share
Figure 1: Overview of ExciTube. Center avatar represents
user currently watching video. Avatars on both sides
represent other users who have watched video that user
selected. These avatars reflected each user's SCR.
evaluations of videos in the real world not only
through each other’s verbal comments, but also
through each other’s unconscious non-verbal
information, such as gestures, facial expressions and
eye movements. Viewers’ truthful reactions are
particularly contained in much unconscious non-
verbal information. However, the previously
mentioned webvideo services do not support the
representation of unconscious non-verbal
information. We believe that unconscious non-
verbal information, and not only comments and
315
Shirokura T., Munekata N. and Ono T..
ExciTube - Video Player for Sharing Viewer’s Excitement.
DOI: 10.5220/0004726503150322
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems (PhyCS-2014), pages 315-322
ISBN: 978-989-758-006-2
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
positive/negative icons, are necessary for webvideos
to enhance the watching experience. Viewers’
excitement in reactions to videos, which is contained
in unconscious non-verbal information, is important
because people who live in different places can
experience a similar sense of excitement with them
by having that information provided to other
viewers.
We carried out an experiment to achieve this
goal on the relationship between a webvideo of short
duration (3 minutes) on Youtube, and the emotional
excitement of a user when watching it. Along with
this experiment, we also developed a video player
called ExciTube (Figure 1) that allowed users to
share their excitement with that of others as visual
information alongside the video they were watching.
The excitement of video viewers was measured
using their skin conductance response (SCR). This
system provided the experience as though it
occurred in the real world where we can notice the
excitement of other video viewers, which in this case
was then expressed as non-verbal information
through SCR. We conducted user-involved
demonstrations of ExciTube at our laboratory and at
a Japanese domestic conference, and confirmed that
people did enjoy using the system and feeling other
people’s sense of excitement.
The remainder of the paper is organised as
follows. Section 2 describes advanced research on
social/interactive television and the sharing of
physiological signals. Section 3 describes an
experiment on the relationship between webvideos
and emotional excitement of viewers and presents
the results. Section 4 describes the ExciTube system,
highlighting distinctive features that appreciably
affect usage. Section 5 describes user-involved
demonstrations of ExciTube. Finally, Section 6
presents a discussion and the conclusion.
2 RELATED WORK
2.1 Sharing Viewing Experiences
Many researchers have proposed systems that
provide experiences like those of watching videos
together with family or friends even though they live
in different locations (Regan et al., 2004) (Shamma
et al., 2008). These systems are divided into two
types that can be used synchronously or
nonsynchronously with other people.
Coppens developed a system that had to be used
synchronously with other people, called AmigoTV
(Coppens et al., 2004) and they focused on broadcast
television. This system consisted of a video screen
and personal avatars, which represented the video
viewers’ faces. Users could express their emotions
through the avatars, and use voice chats to
communicate directly in relation to the television
programme. Users felt closer to others and
connected with them through voice chats and facial
expressions while sharing their time together. This
system led to other similar systems such as Social
TV (Harboe et al., 2008) and Abreu’s 2BeOn (Abreu
et al., 2002). Both systems had voice chat functions
while viewers were watching videos. Other systems
not only had voice chats but also text chats and
instant messaging. Geerts (Geerts, 2006) and Baillie
(Baillie et al., 2007) explored how we communicate
with other people who live in different locations
while watching videos. Even though these systems
were used in different locations, users had to share
them at the same time. In our research, we focused
on a nonsynchronous system because users may not
be able to share videos at the same time.
Harrison developed CollaboraTV (Harrison,
2007) that provided nonsynchronous communication
to users. It consisted of a video screen and avatars,
which represented users who had watched a video
and left comments and positive/negative evaluations.
The user’s comments and positive/negative
evaluations when watching the video were shared
through the avatars with others who watched the
same video. Viewers who used this system did need
not worry about time when watching videos because
the shared comments and evaluations were
synchronized with the video timeline. Users of
NicoNico, which is a webvideo service, can leave
comments on a video screen. The comments flow
over the video screen from right to left. Users
nonsynchronously communicate with others through
the comments. We did not use comments and
positive/negative expressions, but video viewers’
sense of excitement, which is unconscious non-
verbal information, to enhance the webvideo
experience.
Most research has focused on how to place the
expressions of other people on the video screen to
communicate with others, but Harboe's research
presented an ambient display like a color-changing
lamp, which expressed someone's presence. This
system displayed the current number of people
watching television through colours.
We aimed at creating viewing experiences, like
those in the real world, on the web in this study, and
we propose using unconscious non-verbal
information in addition to communications that have
been used in previous research to enhance webvideo
PhyCS2014-InternationalConferenceonPhysiologicalComputingSystems
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experiences. Therefore, we employed the concept of
avatars displayed on the video screen because they
have most frequently been employed by many
researchers.
2.2 Sharing Physiological Signals
There has been much advanced research on sharing
physiological signals that include the emotional
excitement of people (Fairclough, 2009) (Janssen et
al., 2010) (Mandryk et al., 2006). Slovak explored
sharing heart rates when in the laboratory and at
home (Slovak et al. 2012). Shared heart rates were
displayed on a screen or converted into background
music that was played in a room. They found
through the study that participants used the shared
heart rates to communicate with others and they then
felt strong connectedness to others by understanding
their condition through the heart rates. Werner
proposed a United-pulse (Werner et al., 2008),
which is a ring type device that could measure pulse
waves and vibrate, to share heartbeats. Lotan
developed an Impulse system (Lotan et al., 2007)
that measured pulse waves and vibrated, and
allowed users to wirelessly transmit their heartbeat
rhythms to an audio speaker and a lamp. Although
these studies used pulse waves, it was difficult to
detect timing when users became excited because
the physiological signals changed slowly.
Consequently, we used SCR, which is also known as
the galvanic skin response. SCR changed quickly
and could be used to capture the moment the
emotional response to a video occurred.
3 WEBVIDEO WITH
EMOTINOAL EXCITEMENT
We explored the relation between webvideos and the
emotional excitement of users while they were
watching them. We compared emotional excitement,
which was measured from SCR, and the user's
tastes/preferences in an experiment.
3.1 Measuring Emotional Excitement
We used electrical signals detected on the human
body to measure the emotional excitement of
viewers. These signals were objective, and the
quantitative data reflected psychological states and
physiological functions. Such signals have been used
for diagnosis and treatment in medical care and in lie
detectors used during police interrogations. One of
the psychological signals that a lie detector
recognizes is SCR, which occurs when mental states,
such as agitation, surprise, or excitement, induce
changes in conductance on the skin’s surface. We
have little awareness of the physiological
functioning of our own bodies because most
physiological functions are involuntary and therefore
uncontrollable. SCR is a typical example. No one is
aware of the minute amounts of perspiration during
mental agitation unless there is an unusually large
amount of mental stress. Therefore, observing one’s
own SCR produces a strange feeling that this is not a
feature of one’s own body but rather that of another
person. People generally believe that inner agitation
or excitement during communication in daily life
can be concealed. However, SCR can reveal
concealed agitation despite a person’s best intentions
to conceal it.
Figure 2 has a photograph of an SCR sensor and
shows a typical SCR signal trace. We developed the
SCR sensor in our previous work (Munekata et al.,
2006) using an improved circuit recommended by
Fowles (Fowles et al., 1981) that could measure the
magnitude of a user’s SCR. The SCR magnitude was
converted into an SCR value from 0 to 255. Note
that the SCR response is an integrated SCR value in
this paper.
Figure 2: SCR sensor and typical SCR signal trace.
ExciTube-VideoPlayerforSharingViewer'sExcitement
317
3.2 Experiment
We conducted an experiment to examine the relation
between users’ tastes in relation to a webvideo and
their emotional excitement while watching it. The
emotional excitement was evaluated by using SCR
values.
We recruited 10 participants (A-J) from
Hokkaido University. Their ages ranged from 21 to
43 with an average age of 25.3 (σ =33.0). Each
participant watched three out of five official movie
trailers on YouTube chosen by each of them, and
their SCR values were measured for the duration of
each trailer. After that, they ranked the three videos
according to their preferences (1st, 2nd, and 3rd).
All the trailers were 2 minutes long. The genres for
the trailers were two fantasies, two action trailers,
and one drama. All participants said they watched
TV and webvideos daily.
3.3 Results
Table 1 summarizes averaged SCR responses while
participants were watching the 1st and 3rd videos. We
compared participants’ SCRs and the participants’ ranking
through paired t-tests. As a result of this experiment, we
found that the average SCR response while watching the
1st-ranked video was larger than that while watching the
3rd-ranked video (p=0.04607*). Therefore, viewers’
preferences for the videos had a strong relationship with
SCR. Therefore, we think SCR reflected viewer’s
preferences for videos as unconscious non-verbal
information.
Table 1: Average of excitement reaction value while
watching videos that are rated 1st and 3rd by participants.
(*p < 0.05).
Participants 1st 3rd
A 398 330
B 190 181
C 874 380
D 276 199
E 90 41
F 327 312
G 394 279
H 318 282
I 255 176
J 146 55
Paired T-Test
t
2.3122
df 9
p
0.04607*
However, participants B and F did not have a strong
relationship between their favourite rankings of
videos and the average SCR response. There could
be a couple of reasons for this. For example, if both
videos had many sound stimuli, they could make the
users just as excited. Again, the participants may not
have had a strong interest in any of the videos.
Consequently, these cases revealed that these users’
SCR responses differed from those of other users.
Note here that users choose favourite videos when
using webvideo services.
We developed a video player from this
experiment that enabled users to nonsynchronously
share emotional excitement (SCR) through the
internet while watching webvideos with others who
lived in different locations.
4 VIDEO PLAYER
We developed a video player called ExciTube
(Figure 1) that enabled a viewer's SCR to be shared
with others. Users could utilize ExciTube by just
attaching a SCR sensor to their own hand. This
system automatically shared SCRs while participants
were watching a video. The shared SCRs were
represented by three avatar designs. A user could
feel others just by watching a webvideo because
other users’ SCRs were visualized on the video
screen as avatars. This system could be used for
watching videos that had been uploaded onto
YouTube, because the system used YouTube’s API.
4.1 Visualization of Emotional Arousal
Shared SCRs were represented by avatars in this
system because avatars are suitable for representing
people on computers, and users can easily sense
other users (Harrison et al., 2010).
ExciTube had two kinds of avatars (Figure 3).
The user avatar was displayed by default, but users
could select the visibility of user avatar (true/false).
Figure 3: User avatar, and other user avatars, which
represent other users who watched video that user
selected.
Other user avatars reflected the shared SCRs that
were measured while other users were watching
PhyCS2014-InternationalConferenceonPhysiologicalComputingSystems
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Table 2: Avatar design and behaviour adaptation. Top: Person avatar, middle: cartoon avatar, bottom: bulb avatar.
Avatar designs
Default Behavior
SCR
magnitude
Response
duration
Vibration None
Change size
Change
time
Brightness
Lighting
Time
videos that the user had selected. The system
provided three designs for the avatars - a person
design, a cartoon design, and a bulb design. Because
avatar designs and actions have a huge effect on
users, every avatar design had unique actions that
reflected emotional excitement. This system
displayed eight other user avatars at maximum
because it became difficult to watch the videos and
all the other user avatars when there were too many
of them. If this system had more than eight other
user avatars, they would be shown to be randomly
selected within this system.
4.1.1 Person Avatar
The person avatar imitated a person's silhouette to
provide an experience like that at a movie theatre
(Table 2: Top) to the user. The person avatar had a
vibrating behaviour. When the SCR value exceeded
a certain threshold, the person avatar vibrated once.
4.1.2 Cartoon Avatar
The cartoon avatar was inspired by cartoon
animation. This avatar could change size just like
cartoon characters. If there was an SCR response
occurring, the avatar changed according to the SCR
value.
4.1.3 Bulb Avatar
The bulb avatar represented the SCR value as
brightness. Therefore, this avatar was the most
intuitive of the three avatar designs because many
people express brightness as Hi/Low. It was easy for
users to understand their own emotional excitement
and that of others through this avatar.
4.2 Interface
Figure 4 shows the ExciTube interface. Avatars with
the design the user selected are at the bottom of the
application window. The video screen is in the
middle of the window. When users move the mouse
cursor to the top of the window, a search tool bar
Figure 4: Screenshot of Interface.
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319
appears. Users could search videos that had been
uploaded onto YouTube, and they then watched the
videos. The search results had the videos’ thumbnails,
durations, titles and numbers of shared SCRs.
4.3 System Architecture
ExciTube consisted of a client application, server
application, and an SCR sensor. The client
application was built using Adobe AIR and Java.
This application had three functions; the first was to
save the SCRs of users made available by the SCR
sensor, the second was to display avatars, and the
third was to play YouTube videos through the
YouTube API. The server application was built
using the Ruby on Rails framework. The web server
used WEBrick and MySQL. The information from
the videos and SCRs of users was recorded in
MySQL.
5 DEMONSTRATION
We demonstrated ExciTube at our laboratory and at
a Japanese domestic Computer Entertainment
Developers Conference (CEDEC) as a pilot study.
Users could watch three videos in these
demonstrations because ExciTube contained shared
SCR data. We prepared the SCRs of four test users
for each video to demonstrate ExciTube. Therefore,
ExciTube had a user avatar and four other user
avatars from the beginning.
This section introduces comments made by
participants and their observations.
5.1 Laboratory Demonstration
The user avatar was disabled in this demonstration
to observe the effect of other users’ avatars. The
participants were 10 university students (10 men:
20-27 years old). All participants used webvideo
services such as Youtube, Vimeo and NicoNico on a
daily basis. We presented an introduction to this
system before the demonstration.
The positive comments provided were “As the
behaviours of the avatars were synchronised with
the sound effects, the video and avatars were
interesting.”, “The moment when all the avatars did
an action at the same time was interesting.” and
“When I was surprised, the avatar also did an
action.” Therefore, participants felt the presence of
others through the avatars. ExciTube can help
participants get excited even when they are alone
similarly to when they watch videos with others.
Additionally, ExciTube can provide new
experiences through avatar actions as observed from
comments, such as “I looked for interesting points in
the video when the avatar acted”. The participants
also made negative comments, such as “I was
curious about the avatar and was not able to
concentrate on the video.” and “A small avatar did
not have a large enough presence about it. I was
only viewing the video without the avatars.” As this
system was used to convey a similar sense of
excitement to when they watched videos with others,
we thought these negative comments by participants
were not problematic.
This demonstration revealed that ExciTube could
help participants become excited even when they
were alone similarly to when they watched videos
with others, and also that it could create a new
experience through avatar actions that made
watching the videos more interesting.
5.2 Conference Demonstration
We demonstrated ExciTube at CEDEC2011. The
audience consisted not only of game developers and
researchers but also of non-human-computer
interaction attendees. Most of the audience did not
have knowledge of physiological computing. More
than 50 people used our system and more than 100
people watched the demonstration, where the user
avatar and other user avatars were displayed.
Most participants observed their own avatar (user
avatar) and then they understood the behaviour of
the other avatars through their own experience of
this system. After this initial observation, they
enjoyed watching the videos and other users’
avatars. Some participants had particular interest in
the other users’ avatars’ reaction points because their
own avatar’s reaction point was different to theirs.
Additionally, participants left comments about this
system, such as “It was intuitive and very
comprehensible that excitement was expressed by
the brightness of the bulb.”, “I want to use this
technology to evaluate a system we have developed.”
and “I was able to observe other users’ sense of
excitement”. We could easily notice users’
excitement points in the videos with this system.
Therefore, we found this system has the possibility
of being applied to games and their evaluation.
We observed that participants did enjoy
ExciTube through the two demonstrations, and we
found that ExciTube had the potential for providing
new experiences to video viewers.
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6 DISCUSSION
AND CONCLUSIONS
Because this system used the sense of excitement of
video viewers, the avatars did not demonstrate
behaviours when users did not feel excited while
watching videos. Therefore, sharing emotional
excitement made no sense in this case. We do not
become excited in the real world when we watch
boring videos with friends or family. Therefore, this
case was not a problem because our goal was to
offer experiences like those in the real world.
ExciTube was useful for users who wanted to watch
videos with others.
This system had a problem in that users may get
excited by stimulation that is not related to the
videos. This was confirmed in the demonstration.
However, it is thought that a user watching a
webvideo alone receives almost no outside
stimulation. Additionally, we thought that outside
stimulation would not excite users because they
were concentrating on watching a video they chose
themselves.
We provided experiences on the web in this
study as those found in the real world such as when
watching movies with friends or family members.
We conducted an experiment to achieve this by
using the emotional excitement of users when they
were watching webvideos. As a result of the
experiment, a correlation was found in the relation
between emotional excitement and webvideos. We
developed ExciTube that could feel the presence of
others and provide evidence that a user could feel
the emotional excitement of others from SCR
values. This system used avatars that represented the
user and other users, which were displayed on a
video screen. People felt the presence of others
through the avatars. The avatars’ behaviours
reflected the emotional excitement of users and this
was shared when they watched the videos on their
own. The users’ emotional excitement was measured
from their SCRs. We demonstrated ExciTube at our
laboratory and at CEDEC to investigate its
usefulness. The demonstration revealed the positive
effects of participants sharing their emotional
excitement in webvideo experiences.
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