Don't Look at the Camera: Achieving Perceived Eye Contact

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 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.