Avatars meet meetings: Design issues in integrating avatars in distributed corporate meetings

The difficulties remote participants of distributed meetings face are widely recognized. In this paper we describe the design of an avatar-based e-meeting support tool named Olympus, which aims to ameliorate some of the challenges remote participants face in distributed meetings. Olympus provides a customizable peripheral display on the bottom of existing e-meeting solutions. An initial observational study was conducted of the use of Olympus in 6 meetings, three each of a status meeting and a presentation meeting. By illustrating how avatars were used in the two meeting types, we hope to surface design issues and refine our understanding of how avatars may be useful in the design of online meeting spaces. © 2010 ACM.