The UBImpressed Workshop: Ubiquitous First Impressions and Ubiquitous Awareness

First impressions matter. Specifically in the workplace, first impressions affect key outcomes like being hired or promoted, and are important in sales, service, and hospitality.

Idiap Research Institute
Centre du Parc, Martigny
Thursday November 23, 2017

Research in organizational psychology and nonverbal communication has revealed some of the connections existing between nonverbal behavior and impressions in the workplace. However, much of the existing research in this domain has been done in the laboratory using manual coding and for single organizational situations. Furthermore, how to make these findings useful for training has often been disconnected from laboratory studies, given the lack of tools to automatically characterize nonverbal behavior and favorable impressions, and to embed them as part of training processes. The UBImpressed project, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, has integrated nonverbal communication research with computer science research, including audio-visual analysis of behavior and machine learning, to study several of these issues.

The goal of the workshop is to present some of the results of the UBImpressed project to a mixed audience of academics and practitioners in psychology, hospitality, and computing, and to start a conversation about possible future applications of the project results.

The event will provide an opportunity to learn and discuss about these emerging topics, and will feature presentations and demonstrations.

Participation is by personal invitation only.