A lot of times when I talk to people, I don't maintain eye contact the whole time. I'm sure that it leads to all kind of different pseudo-psychiatric theories about me, but I don't care. With video chat, you just have to sit there and stare at the other person's face the whole time, which I find to be a little weird. That, and I find video chat to be pretty unnecessary. In most cases it doesn't add much to the conversation.
Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#22People tend to be self-conscious of the way they are perceived by others and will try to avoid any situations where their self-image (everything from intelligence to physical aesthetics / beauty) can be harmed or their negative self-views (worries) can be re-validated... Especially when alternatives are available.
Video: everything from your voice, to your intelligence, to your looks will be perceived by others. Voice: looks are out. Text: none of the above (relatively; you can still make yourself look quiet stupid with bad grammar).
Psychological explanations dealing with egos (the self) are always 100% valid when dealing with humans. It's not about video quality here.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#23because it's very awkward that the camera is not in the same place you are looking. You're looking at the monitor, when the webcam is most often above the monitor. So all the viewer (and vice versa) sees is you looking down. It's not "eye-to-eye" conversation. If you want the other person to feel like they are looking at you, you have to look dead into the camera. But then you miss out on seeing the other person.
There's another solution to this, besides the ones mentioned by others in this thread, which someone can probably do themselves. Just look at the design of the teleprompter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Teleprompter_schematic.svg
Errol M0rris used a device with a similar design, called the "Interrotron", so that when he interviewed people, they'd have direct eye contact both with him and the viewers: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/eyecontact/interrotron.ht...
Picture of it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkottke/1526404040/
This should really make the design clear: http://www.whiterabbitdesigncompany.com/Miscellaneous/images...
All you need besides a screen and webcam is a half-silvered mirror, good lighting and an encasing so that the webcam is in the dark, besides light from straight ahead through the mirror. I've been meaning to make this myself, since I spend hours everyday on video chat, but haven't gotten to it yet.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#24I may be a spectacularly inconsiderate communicator, but for me the answer is multitasking.
I can and do do a wide range of tasks while having an audio phone call with people. At home I can do basic housework, prepare meals, wander round for all sorts of things with the phone jammed between by head and my shoulder. It works well. I never have had video chat facilities for work (or needed them really) but I can think of any number of times gesticulating at colleagues for private communications while on an audio call, which is far from easy on video. Do you simply turn off the video briefly? If so, how do you explain this to the person you're communicating with?
Give me video chat and I'm tied to the screen. I can't easily do another job in parallel because it's on show and the other party can see that I'm not looking at them. They can see if I look around the screen to a TV, they can (indirectly) see if I open a second window on my computer to try a parallel task because the light to my face from the computer screen suddenly changes. This is quite visible most of the time.
For the times when video is a benefit it's a real benefit in my experience; being able to see the other person's expression, be shown objects or spaces in real time, generally use more communication methods. The bulk of the time though its benefits in my experience are small, and come at the expense of a significant extra burden on the communicators. Video, IMHO, will remain a niche in this area because the costs outweigh benefits to participants.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#25David Foster Wallace predicted in Infinite Jest that people wouldn't want to do video calling and went into great, albeit ridiculous, detail as to why.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#26I wonder how much of this is generational-- my teenage daughter probably videochats more in a week than I have in my life. I think that over the longue duree , a lot of technology shifts occur not because individuals gradually get convinced to move to the new technology, but because the folks clinging to the old ways eventually die out. (I'm paraphrasing Kuhn on paradigm change in science, of course.)
I think you've hit the nail on the head; my niece and nephews, teenagers and slightly younger, will hang out for hours with multiple video chat windows open.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#27I think it's mostly because it's hard to do other things while video chatting. Things like driving or walking or looking something up or typing, etc.
If I have a video chat window open, I feel sorta weird when I cover it up and go look something up or cover it with a notepad window to take notes, or a code editor to write some relevant code, etc. I feel like I'm rudely ignoring someone who's right there. And they have no cue this is happening, either, so they might assume it isn't and say something like, "so like this shows..." while briefly holding something up. And I can't see it just then because the window was covered. They had no way to know that I wasn't looking and missed it. Then there's awkwardness, repeating stuff, etc. It just feels slightly... wrong. IMO.
Edit: It'd be interesting if, while on a video chat, any windows or apps covering the remote participant "showed through" to them. I wonder if that alone would give enough sense of context to make it work a bit better?
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#28Many people that I asked recently pointed to convenience as the culprit. It is too hard to coordinate a video call, they would say, too much of a pain to setup and initiate. But is that really true? In my gmail chat window right now I can see video icons next to the names of roughly a dozen of my friends that are at their computers right now, logged into gmail at the same time as me, and literally one click away from joining me in a video chat. But guess what? We never click that button.
It's a factor. For people who don't have a one-click flawless iphone experience, clicking on the gchat icon when you don't know exactly what's going to happen is a sufficient barrier that it's not worth worrying about when you know exactly how regular chat will work and will do exactly what you want. Once people figure out how to make it work for them, or the technology gets more simple and reliable, it'll be used a lot though it will never fully replace voice chat or texting. There's already plenty of stories of people using video chat. My roommate uses his iPhone to cook dinner with his mother, who lives 6000 miles away.
Even on Star Trek, video chat wasn't ubiquitous. Communicators did not display video, as quite clearly there are times when it's convenient to hear someone's voice and have eyes free to focus elsewhere.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#29because it's very awkward that the camera is not in the same place you are looking. You're looking at the monitor, when the webcam is most often above the monitor. So all the viewer (and vice versa) sees is you looking down. It's not "eye-to-eye" conversation. If you want the other person to feel like they are looking at you, you have to look dead into the camera. But then you miss out on seeing the other person.
You could find eyes on the face of the speaker and alter the image of them to look like he looks directly at the camera.
This should be interesting task especially when algorithm does not do this 100% perfect.
Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?
#30Put simply, video is superfluous to my communication needs in a one-to-one conversation.
Our company is spread out over two states and three cities, so one would think that we're a prime candidate for video calling. There are subtleties that can be expressed by seeing each other that are simply not there when communicating through voice only. However, these subtleties are superfluous to most conversations.
Interestingly, I find video chat most useful in scenarios where it is least available.
One of the most challenging aspects of communication is interruption. Most people consider it rude to interrupt the speaker, but we do it all the time. It's part of our natural flow of conversation. It keeps us from wasting time, and helps refine the conversation.
With one-to-one communication, interruption is simple. You interject audibly, and the speaker will either pause, giving you the go ahead to take the floor, or will continue to finish their thought. This interplay sets the tone for the conversation. There's a subtle play for dominance in any conversation where there are opposing viewpoints.
With many-to-many communication, interruption is complex. Anyone who has ever been on a conference call knows that it is easiest to just keep your mouth shut and let everyone drone on for as long as they need to. In my experience, this is a major contributor to the unnecessary length of conference calls.
It's difficult to interject on a conference call, because too many people are trying to get a word in, and speakers continue too long on a string of points. By the time you can get the speaker's attention, the interjection irrelevant to the current topic.
Video calling among a group has the benefit of allowing participants to use body language to interrupt the speaker. A speaker, seeing a participant visibly uncomfortable, is more likely to pause and allow them to interject.
Unfortunately, group video chat over the most popular medium, Skype, is clumsy (requires Skype 5; can only be initiated from a computer, not mobile) and expensive (not free).