Abstract
This paper focuses on technical, social and psychological aspects of the use of
a video wall for communications between two geographically separated halves of a
university department. The overall usability of the system is related to
technological limitations such as video and audio quality, and aspects connected
with organizational and interpersonal psychology. A video wall creates a new
type of "social space", raising new social psychology issues, and
requiring new types of interpersonal behaviour . Whilst it has some close
parallels with standard desk top video conferencing, it also has some unique and
important differences. This paper briefly summarizes those problems and
discusses the issues that are shared with other electronic collaboration tools
such as desktop video conferencing, followed by a discussion of those issues
unique to the video wall. Ongoing trials are being conducted with alterations to
audio and video quality, and an analysis is being performed of usage of and
responses to the video wall.