Patent ID: 7444377

Claim:
A conversation supporting apparatus for supporting face-to-face conversation among a plurality of participants in an occasion in which the participants participate, the apparatus comprising: personal information storing unit that stores personal information including at least one characteristic value representing a characteristic of a participant; person identifying unit that detects presence of a participant, and identifying the detected participant; personal information retrieving unit that retrieves personal information on the participant identified by the person identifying unit from the personal information storing unit; characteristic value extracting unit that extracts a predetermined characteristic value from the personal information retrieved by the personal information retrieving unit; and characteristic value outputting unit that outputs, based on a color predetermined for each attribution of the characteristic value, the characteristic value extracted from the personal information of the plurality of the participants by the characteristic value extracting unit as an average color corresponding to a number of participants each having a specific attribution of the characteristic value and displays the characteristic value to the plurality of participants to encourage direct face-to-face conversation in the presence of the plurality of participants.