Googly Eyes: Displaying User's Eyes on a Head-Mounted Display for Improved Nonverbal Communication

Virtual reality (VR) has been becoming increasingly prevalent in daily lives of humans in various settings. One of the concerns for this technology in becoming mainstream is the isolation caused by today's occlusive headsets. An aspect of isolation is related to restricted nonverbal communication between headset-wearing and outside users. To address this gap, we developed “Googly Eyes”, a system that acts for the outside users as a window into the eyes of the headset-wearing user. On a smartphone display that was attached to a FOVE head-mounted display (HMD), user's eye movements were visualized in real time using eye-tracking data. Our main goal is to increase social communication between HMD and non-HMD users, hence increase social presence; and increase enjoyment through improved communication. This paper includes the motivation, design rationale, and implementation details of the Googly Eyes along with preliminary results from a pilot study session and preliminary user studies with a small cohort.