Talk to Me, Not the Slides: A Real-Time Wearable Assistant for Improving Eye Contact in Presentations

Abstract: Effective eye contact is a cornerstone of successful public speaking. It strengthens the speaker's credibility and fosters audience engagement. Yet, managing effective eye contact is a skill that demands extensive training and practice, often posing a significant challenge for novice speakers. In this paper, we present SpeakAssis, the first real-time, in-situ wearable system designed to actively assist speakers in maintaining effective eye contact during live presentations. Leveraging a head-mounted eye tracker for gaze and scene view capture, SpeakAssis continuously monitors and analyzes the speaker's gaze distribution across audience and non-audience regions. When ineffective eye-contact patterns are detected, such as insufficient eye contact, or neglect of certain audience segments, SpeakAssis provides timely, context-aware audio prompts via an earphone to guide the speaker's gaze behavior. We evaluate SpeakAssis through a user study involving eight speakers and 24 audience members. Quantitative results show that SpeakAssis increases speakers' eye-contact duration by 62.5% on average and promotes a more balanced distribution of visual attention. Additionally, statistical analysis based on audience surveys reveals that improvements in speaker's eye-contact behavior significantly enhance the audience's perceived engagement and interactivity during presentations.