Moving from talking heads to newlyweds: exploring video chat use during major life events

Video chat programs for home and personal use (e.g., Skype) are becoming increasingly popular for doing more than simply conversing with a remote friend or family member. This creates a need to understand the broader use of video chat that moves \"beyond talking heads.\" In this paper, we investigate one emergent scenario: major life events where video chat is used to connect remote participants to a ritual gathering (e.g., a wedding, a funeral). To explore this scenario, we conducted an online survey with 87 people who reported on their usage of video chat for viewing or sharing major life events. Our results show that major life events, as an example of a burgeoning set of video chat scenarios, bring unique socio-technical contexts and challenges. Asymmetry characterized much of the findings: we find differences between local and remote group sizes, environments, atmosphere, and emotionality. We discuss these situations and identify ways to improve the design of video chat to better support shared experiences.