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A theory of Zoom fatigue

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

31–40 of 213 posts

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#31
post #18

Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings. * You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you. * You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person. * You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have…

In our (academic) meetings, people generally default to switching off their camera when there's more than a handful of participants. I find this much less stressful. I can also do some physical activity which helps concentration if I'm just listening.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#32

I was on a partially-remote team for years, with bi-weekly team conference calls - webcam was possible but we all never used it, not even the manager. Screenshare was used for presentations. But audio was enough. Why is everyone defaulting to video calls for things? It adds so much "noise" and cognitive load on things.

For some it makes all the difference to see others. I play along for them. I actually dress up for meetings/work and show off the company swag.

For some it also helps knowing someone sees you. I don't mind if others don't share video, I set that bar for myself.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#33
I’m surprised this didn’t mention the elephant in the room: the audio quality is terrible. I simply can’t hear half of what is said, even at full volume in a quiet room.

Either I ask for repetition all the time (and walk over whatever the next person said), or I assume it from context and let it go.

Even when I can pick up all the sounds, it’s so different from hearing voice in person that I have to concentrate just to parse the audio into meaning. It’s exhausting.

Cell phone calls are still pretty bad, too. Low bandwidth digital audio compression is just wretched.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#34

For one-on-one videoconferencing meetings with normal latency (e.g. within 3-4 time zones), I find zero fatigue or problems like this. The only "fatigue" I find is frustration when people are talking over each other or multiple people trying to jump in at the same time. This generally happens either when latency is bad (e.g. US-Japan), connections are bad generally (MS Office decides to auto-update in the background…

A meeting that has a component of "go around the room and get everyone's input" is harder in Zoom. In a physical room, you go clockwise or counterclockwise. But on Zoom, when someone finishes talking, who knows who's supposed to go next?

You need someone to serve as the facilitator for the meeting and call out the order.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#35
“Kevin, you’re muted. Unmute and say that again, please”

“Sara, your voice cut out for 30 seconds and we didn’t hear any of that, can you please repeat?”

Two people talking: “Bfrhtxhlcyfoydoyd... oh, you go ahead” “no, you go ahead” “OK like I was saying, cofhlflydhlbdfykdjtxtc...”

“Hang on, I think Kumar just disconnected. We need him to continue.” “Can someone text Kumar and see if he can rejoin?”

“I can’t see more than five huge pixels of your presentation, Jan. Can you re-enable screen sharing?”

Things that are exhausting and don’t happen during face to face meetings...

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#37
Seems obvious and succinct to me: on Zoom, you feel compelled to look at the screen all the time. In-person, you can respectfully look anywhere in the room because the other person shares the physical space and can intuit where your attention is.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#38
post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

Just another example of how the transition to digital from analog wasn't a complete solve. Switching from analog cable to digital cable also introduced this latency so that button presses on the remote are not instantaneous (due to timing issues switching between transport streams). It's kind of like Coke/New Coke/Coke Classic. Eventually, those that remember will fade away, leaving only those familiar with the current situation.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#39
I think another issue is having to re-invent cues for changing who is talking in the conversation. When you're talking to someone in person, you can pick up a lot of information as to whether they want to continue talking, or whether it's your turn. On video conferences, those things are missing. You might detect a lull in the conversation and start talking, but at the same time, someone else does the same thing and starts talking. You have 100ms+ of latency, so you can get into what you're saying before realizing that someone else took their turn (or you took theirs). The collision mitigation algorithm takes place, and it's just as bad for your mental fatigue as it is for your WiFi's latency (which uses the same algorithm -- listen before talk, and if you collide, wait a random amount of time and repeat). These things just don't happen when a few people are in the same room together.

The result is that we try to use the video channel to pre-allocate timeslots for speaking. You make your eyes bigger, you raise a finger... but sometimes people aren't looking at the video, or don't understand what your newly-invented cue actually means. This is all very tiring.

The overall quality of the call is much lower than real life, as well. People do not own good microphones or cameras, so you can't actually hear them or see them very well. The noise gate intervenes and just cuts off audio from time to time. It is maddening how bad it all is.

Many years ago when I worked for Bank of America, we had these multiple-100k Cisco videoconferencing setups. They worked really well. My friends and I were at work pretty late and there was a tornado warning, so we couldn't go home (we all biked). We went to these conference rooms, set up a link between the two rooms right next to each other, and had a totally normal conference. (Things were set up so that the entire wall of the room was a video screen, and it had an array of cameras, microphones, and speakers. Everything was tuned perfectly so it looked like the people in the other room were just sitting across the table from you. There was no latency, everyone was their normal size, and the audio and video quality were perfect. Obviously with two rooms across the hall from each other, there shouldn't be any latency... but at least the system didn't add its own. It makes a big difference.)

Finally, I think another issue is that people just aren't used to getting work done with video conferences. I worked as a remote team at Google, so pretty much 100% of my meetings were video conferences. 1:1s with my manager and everything else. The system suffered from the same quality/latency issues as anything else (though we did typically have good cameras and microphone arrays in every room), but through practice, people got good at getting stuff done despite the limitations. I never really felt fatigued the way I do on calls with random people at home. (I guess my tips are: have an agenda in advance, and use your screen share to show progress through the agenda. Call on people in remote locations: "Anyone from the New York room have anything to add?".)

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#40
post #18

Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings. * You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you. * You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person. * You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have…

So why the fixation on a video call? I'm probably just an old curmudgeon, but to me the benefits do not out weigh the oddities being discussed. Everyone wearing their pieces of flair with their "personalized" backgrounds are tiresome.

I can see the benefits of a screen share/presentation, but I really don't need to see the other people involved. I don't care about tone of voice. I get sarcasm. For the people that don't, then even if they can see them, the sarcasm isn't more/less because it's a video call.

Video calls to me are just another version of "Hey look at me!!!! I'm special"

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