Asymmetric delay in video-mediated group discussions

Delay has been found as one of the most crucial factors determining the Quality of Experience (QoE) in synchronous video-mediated communication. The effect has been extensively studied for dyadic conversations and recently the study of small group communications has become the focus of the research community. Contrary to dyads, in which the delay is symmetrically perceived, this is not the case for groups. Due to the heterogeneous structure of the internet, asymmetric delays between participants are likely to occur. We conducted a trial with video-mediated group discussions with five participants in symmetric and asymmetric delay conditions. In this paper, we focus on the asymmetric conditions, in which only one participant has an added delay. Previous research showed that interaction and context are essential factors in the QoE of participants. Therefore, we perform an analysis of our data towards these factors and compare our data between the asymmetric and the symmetric delay conditions. We discuss the differences in perception of delay reported from multi-party to dyadic video-conferencing. Our data shows that already one person with a high delay, affects the experience of the whole group as strong as the person with delay. This disruption is perceived more intensely by active participants rather than non-active ones- regardless of whether they have the delay or not. Compared to dyadic situations the group scenario shows a less intense perception of delay.