Disclosed is an application interface that takes into account the user's gaze direction relative to who is speaking in an interactive multi-participant environment where audio-based contextual information and/or visual-based semantic information is being presented. Among these various implementations, two different types of microphone array devices (MADs) may be used. The first type of MAD is a steerable microphone array (a.k.a. a steerable array) which is worn by a user in a known orientation with regard to the user's eyes, and wherein multiple users may each wear a steerable array. The second type of MAD is a fixed-location microphone array (a.k.a. a fixed array) which is placed in the same acoustic space as the users (one or more of which are using steerable arrays).