Abstract
The popularity of videophones is not yet wide-spread; however, a promising growth in access at home or offices in the near future is out of question. The applications of video telephony are broad, from the basic communication tool to the medium of medical consultancy, distance-learning or video conferences.This dissertation is mainly concerned with the differences between the video phones and the traditional wire phones and how people change their behaviors when communicating with visual images. The experiment is observed by three aspects: privacy, task performance and preference. The result indicates that when conducting some specific tasks, such as education, medicare, or marketing, the performance by the video phones is better than that of by the traditional phones; that people automatically select the appropriate communication mode depends on the role of communicator-caller or receiver, frequent or unfrequent, or on purpose; that privacy is more valued for the people who use video phones.Businesses are now searching for high speed data services on the move, such as live video telephony or faster wireless internet access to increase efficiency. From the consequences of this research, video phones indeed can increase the effect and efficiency and make a valid contribution toward further evaluation and understanding of video phones.