The Definition of Telepresence
Every few days the team at WR stumbles across another company calling its solution a “telepresence” solution. In fact, just the other day this analyst was on a briefing with a streaming company that called their offering a “one-way telepresence solution.”
We have come to accept that there are countless definitions of telepresence, but we always assumed every definition would include two-way communication. It’s no wonder that the market-accepted definition of telepresence is clear as mud.
In hopes of sifting through the vendor hype, we are re-posting our definition of telepresence here. The first thing to state is that unlike many vendors who have attempted to capitalize on the term telepresence, WR does not consider telepresence to be a product category at all. Instead …
Telepresence is an immersive experience, based on videoconferencing technology, that gives the local participants the feeling that they are in the same room as the remote participants.
In order to provide this “telepresence experience,” a videoconferencing system must provide the following three key elements:
1) Life sized images of the remote participants
2) Proper position and proximity of the remote participants
3) High quality audio and video
The above definition implies a few key items:
1) Telepresence is not just for the meeting room
2) Telepresence does not require more than one screen
3) Telepresence does not specifically require HD !
In summary, we believe that telepresence is an experience that can be delivered by a variety of videoconferencing systems – if deployed and used in the proper manner.
Hopefully this post has clarified our definition of telepresence. We will explain how we track telepresence as a market category in a future post.
Do you Want Even More Information?
WR’s Visual Communication Practice (VCP) maintains in-depth coverage of videoconferencing, telepresence, and streaming.
Recent telepresence content
Recent videoconferencing content
Recent streaming content
5 February 2010 at 4:25 PM
Thank you! I use a similar definition of telepresence in my research (high quality life-sized images, direct eye contact, spatial audio). Although we’re separate research firms, I think it’s vital that we as a research community all draw a line in the sand in defining the difference between telepresence and videoconferencing to provide that clarity.
The flip side is that telepresence will increasingly be defined as an interactive and collaborative experience where content sharing, 3-D video and haptic feedback will be increasingly incorporated. (Though I might recoil a bit if we ever start having smell and taste integrated into a telepresence environment!) It stops being solely about a technological standard and more about the experience.