"Picture the Audience...": Exploring Private AR Face Filters for Online Public Speaking

Faced with public speaking anxiety, one common piece of advice is to picture the audience in a new light, using your mind’s eye. With Augmented Reality (AR) face filters, it becomes possible to literally change how one sees oneself or others. In this paper, we explore privately applied AR filters during online public speaking. Private means that these effects are only visible to the speaker. To investigate this possibly controversial concept, we conducted an online survey with 100 respondents to gather a diverse set of initial impressions, possible boundaries, and guidelines. Following this, we built a prototype of a private AR web-based video-calling application, and pilot-tested it with 16 participants to gain more in-depth insights. Based on our results, we outline key user perspectives and opportunities for the private application of AR face filters during online public speaking and discuss them in the context of previous literature on this topic.