Veeo, Inc. (Las Vegas NV) is opening a new presentation station category with a new through-the-screen content- enhanced camera for electronic conferencing and training purpose-designed to assure direct eye contact.

Placing the camera behind its transparent-OLED screen means that simply by facing its screen, the presenter looks directly into the camera. No other camera device can put its camera in a straight and centered path to its display screen, and absent the perception of the presenter looking other participants directly in the eye, they may intuitively regard a presenter as looking dodgy or evasive.

“Eye contact is well-established as being important in nonverbal communication,” says Veeo CEO Ji Shen, “but when the communications have computers in the middle, it’s electronically impossible to put a webcam in the center of the display, and if the camera isn’t centered, it’s geometrically impossible to center eye contact on the camera. A webcam located in or on a bezel is simply never at whatever point on the screen happens to be drawing a presenter’s eyes. Eye contact is so strong a nonverbal communication influence, we had to invent a way for that to happen.”

It was an LG breakthrough, transparent OLED displays, that let the Veeo development team find their answer. It let them center the camera behind the display screen, while also using the panel to introduce content from a connected computer, or from internal processing. Simply by looking at this screen, the presenter directly faces the camera behind it; this also means the presenter’s eyes center on what appears to online participants to be direct eye-to-eye contact.

Authoritative sources associate direct eye contact with trust and credulity, and absence of eye contact as low confidence, hesitancy or evasiveness. Some sources (e.g., American Psychological Association PsycNet) reference “virtual meeting fatigue” when participants become distracted. Combining direct eye contact with layered digital content more thoroughly engages those watching and makes a greater impact on participants.

Three Veeo products are planned to debut in the summer of 2024.

• Veeo Holodeck M30 (around $2500) with a 30″ screen and an enclosed case.
• Veeo Holodeck T30 (around $3,000) unenclosed 30″ clear glass panel that recognizes gestures.
• Veeo Holodeck T55 (around $8,500) unenclosed 55″ clear glass screen for conference rooms.

Veeo (https://veeonow.com/) is previewing prototypes of these products at the January 9, 2024, Showstoppers event during CES. LG transparent OLED technology lets Veeo Holodeck products seamlessly homogenize the live presenter video with computer graphics and marker-on-glass whiteboard annotations.