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A theory of Zoom fatigue

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

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Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#201

Post by martinpw »

imiric wrote: post #185
lostdog wrote: 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…

I wonder if VR meetings will take off because of this crisis. Most of the issues you mention would be solved by VR, except the audio latency, which is the biggest hurdle. For mass adoption the headsets would have to become even more comfortable and lightweight, the displays faster and higher resolution, with lower price and easier setup. I haven't followed the latest developments, so we might be a couple of generatio…

We did some meetings in VR. It definitely has some upsides, eg you can stand in a virtual circle and you get to see who people are looking at which makes at least that aspect of meetings better than video.

The big downside is the friction of getting it set up. Inevitably someone has a dead battery or their VR setup decides it absolutely needs to update drivers for the Nth time this week, and then everyone is waiting or unsure what is going on.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#202

Post by RandomBacon »

papeda wrote: post #113
fastball wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe someone needs to add a feature to their video calling solution where you can press a button to "raise your hand".

Maybe this is sarcasm, buy Zoom has that exact feature.

I used that feature to "raise my hand" in my first ever Zoom meeting. The host didn't realize it until I raised my actual hand on video.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#203

Post by RandomBacon »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #111

Has anyone here used Mumble? They put a great deal of effort into lowering latency, and in my experience the results are quite good. I wish it wasn’t so fringe so I could get non-tech people to use it with me.

I just looked. It's not free. The website ambiance is also not very inviting.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#204

Post by shadowtree »

Love how nobody checks what Zoom actually does in terms of audio.

First, the do a lot around synchronizing video and audio. On bad connections they slow and speed up video and audio to keep the appearance of coherence. Really, really hard stuff that other video conf systems fail at.

Also, they have audio settings to filter background noise. Basic settings around the mic, but the Advanced settings about noise cancellation ("Original Audio").

If you book online classes for music teachers, you'll see why they prefer Zoom and which settings they recommend.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#205

Post by Wowfunhappy »

RandomBacon wrote: post #203
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #111

Has anyone here used Mumble? They put a great deal of effort into lowering latency, and in my experience the results are quite good. I wish it wasn’t so fringe so I could get non-tech people to use it with me.

I just looked. It's not free. The website ambiance is also not very inviting.

Ah, I know what you saw! That's the wrong site—how did they get to the top of Google?

The correct one is: https://www.mumble.info/

It's free, OSS, etc. It does require hosting a server, however.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#206

Post by mattr47 »

as-j wrote: post #178
djsumdog wrote: 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…

> Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? They weren't always, except for local calls. My Background: I made a lot overseas phone calls in the 1980's to talk to my father, from North America to Japan. I also took a telecom class going through uni. When calling Japan, not only was it crazy expensive, but the connection was typically terrible. We considered it amazing to be calling Japan at all, so tha…

Same for me when I was stationed in West Germany in 1988 and then South Korea in 1991. 2-3 second delay and it cost around $2-$3/minute.

When I went back to South Korea in 1994 I was able to telnet into compuserve from on base, and then email back home.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#207

Post by tylerjwilk00 »

I recently discovered that the best way for me to communicate over Zoom when speaking is to not even look at the screen. I'll stare off into the distance and just focus on my words and thoughts.

Video and audio lag seems to short circuit the communication interrupt window that happens normally in person to person communication, although in large enough gatherings that fails even IRL.

Another thing is that the way Zoom gallery mode works is a bit unnatural in IRL. In normal P2P communication your only looking at one set of eyes balls at a time. All of the sudden you have several sets of eyeballs you can see all it once. This makes it more like public speaking and less like a small tribe meeting.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#208

Post by evolve2k »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24
crazygringo wrote: post #5

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?

We created a pattern that when they finish the speaker nominates who goes next, cuts a bunch of awkward lag from going around the circle. Maybe give that a try.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#209

Post by RandomBacon »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #205
RandomBacon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked. It's not free. The website ambiance is also not very inviting.

Ah, I know what you saw! That's the wrong site—how did they get to the top of Google? The correct one is: https://www.mumble.info/ It's free, OSS, etc. It does require hosting a server, however.

They have the same name as a competing service???

It sounds like they made a mistake choosing that name/domain.

Re: A theory of Zoom fatigue

#210

Post by jquast »

nikanj wrote: post #82
jonshariat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. After reading the title, I immediately thought of the Doherty Threshold [1]. It states that if the system can respond to user actions and give the user feedback within 400ms, it increases users’ attention and productivity. That constant delay, plus the worse ones when the connection loses strength, put a constant toll on "zoom" conversations. I think that is the main factor but many of the items they brought…

I can't believe basic things like typing out an email in Outlook visibly lag at times. I'm a decent typist, but I find it absolutely ludicrous that this quad-core monster is at times half a word behind on my typing

I can type up to 180wpm and I have to intentionally slow myself down to half speed, to use microsoft's start menu, wow. Typing "cmd.exe" or "notepad" in windows start menu, seeing those applications briefly appear as I type, but by the time I press return, it forgot about the match, and launches a bing search instead.

I feel like microsoft is still cluseless, looking at bing analytics and thinking millions of people search for "notepad" every day because they really think its a great thing to research?

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