[AG-TECH] AG Node Room

[Emilee J Patrick]

hello mike

my first suggestion to you is to give some careful thought to how you
expect your AG node room to be used. the design of the physical space
will facilitate certain types of activities and inhibit others,
through influening how many people the room can comfortably support,
the number and placement of microphones and cameras, the size
requirements for your display area, the type of interaction
(lecture-style, conversation...) etc.

a couple of additional suggestions from my experience of helping to
design our ag node room here at Motorola Labs:

- color: don't use black or white for a backdrop. choose a neutral
color of medium brightness. i chose a medium blue color for our
walls -- i received a lot of teasing when the room was being painted
but the video really does look great. video cameras can't 'perceive'
contrast to the same degree as the human eye, so if there is too much
contrast the camera will compensate by making adjustments. this can
result in images that are too bright or too dark.

- lighting: learn about color temperature -- it has a lot to do with
how the colors in your room come across to others viewing your video.
we have full-spectrum incandescent flood lights in our room. there has
been some discussion on this list recently about how the flickering of
fluorescent lights impacts video compression -- you sould take a look
at the archives for more information about this (
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/web-mail-archive/lists/ag-tech/maillist.ht
ml ). one more comment about lighting -- very bright, harsh light
directed straight down onto people's faces creates undesirable
shadows. a bright light that is "soft" or "diffuse" and is directed at
somewhat of an angle will look much better on camera.

- noise: the four boxes that make up the node make a significant
amount of noise, so if it is possible put them behind some kind of
sound barrier or in a closet

- display size: bigger images engender a greater sense of presence, so
you might want to invest in short-throw lenses for your projectors

- camera placement: try to place your cameras so that you can
"simulate" eye-contact... by positioning a video feed directly above a
camera, people end up looking more or less directly into the camera
when they are talking to people appearing in that video feed. you
should also position one camera so that you can transmit a view of
what the people in your room are seeing up on the display wall so
people in other locations have some idea of what you are seeing

i hope this helps,
-em


Emilee Patrick, Senior Human Factors Engineer
User Centered Research, Motorola Labs
Rm. 2230, 1301 E. Algonquin Rd. Schaumburg, IL 60196
phone: 847.538.6886  fax: 847.576.3240

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Daw" <Mike.Daw at man.ac.uk>
To: "AG Technical Developers" <ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 9:44 AM
Subject: [AG-TECH] AG Node Room


> Dear all,
>
> We're building an AG node here in Manchester (UK!).
>
> I was wondering if there was any desirable specification on the
> environmental aspects of an AG node room (i.e. colours of walls,
backdrop,
> noise etc.)? Failing any formal spec, does anyone have any comments
on
> this subject?
>
> Mike Daw
> CSAR
> University of Manchester
> +44 161 275 7026
>
>
>
>