The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
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Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#2Why — though in the early days of interlace's internetted teleputers that operated off largely the same fiber-digital grid as the phone companies, the advent of video-telephoning (a.k.a. 'videophony') enjoyed an interval of huge consumer popularity — callers thrilled at the idea of phone-interfacing both aurally and facially (the little first-generation phone-video cameras being too crude and narrow-apertured for anything much more than facial close-ups) on first- generation teleputers that at that time were little more than high-tech tv sets, though of course they had that little 'intelligent-agent' homuncular icon that would appear at the lower-right of a broadcast/cable program and tell you the time and temperature outside or remind you to take your blood-pressure medication or alert you to a particularly compelling entertainment-option now coming up on channel like 491 or something, or of course now alerting you to an incoming video-phone call and then tap-dancing with a little iconic straw boater and cane just under a menu of possible options for response, and callers did love their little homuncular icons — but Why, within like 16 months or 5 sales quarters, the tumescent demand curve for 'videophony' suddenly collapsed like a kicked tent, so that, by the year of the depend adult undergarment, fewer than 10% of all private telephone communications utilized any video-image-fiber data-transfers or coincident products and services, the average u.s. phone-user deciding that s/he actually preferred the retrograde old low-tech bell-era voice-only telephonic interface after all, a preferential about-face that cost a good many precipitant video-telephony-related entrepreneurs their shirts, plus destabilizing two highly respected mutual funds that had ground-floored heavily in video-phone technology, andvery nearly wiping out the maryland state employees' retirement system's freddie-mac fund, a fund whose administrator's mistress's brother had been an almost manically precipitant video-phone-technology entrepreneur . . . and but so why the abrupt consumer retreat back to good old voice-only telephoning?
The answer, in a kind of trivalent nutshell, is: (1) emotional stress, (2) physical vanity, (3) a certain queer kind of self- obliterating logic in the microeconomics of consumer high-tech.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#3Why — though in the early days of interlace's internetted teleputers that operated off largely the same fiber-digital grid as the phone companies, the advent of video-telephoning (a.k.a. 'videophony') enjoyed an interval of huge consumer popularity — callers thrilled at the idea of phone-interfacing both aurally and facially (the little first-generation phone-video cameras being too crude and narrow-apertured for any…
One of David Foster Wallace’s many prescient musings. It’s a snippet from Infinite Jest, for those curious. Truly a fantastic novel. Clearly I’ve read his books too often though, because even without the telltale reference to interlace I would have picked that up as his writing in a sentence or two.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#4I find it a bit amusing, and a bit tiring, how our body language and emotive faces have instantly reacted to network drops and lags; at your next meeting watch how vigorously your teammates nod, and how wide they smile, and how much teeth they show, so that the faintest smirk will be remembered.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#5From the abstract:
“[W]e propose and test a model where study condition (camera on versus off) was linked to daily feelings of fatigue; daily fatigue, in turn, was presumed to relate negatively to voice and engagement during virtual meetings. We further predict that gender and organizational tenure will moderate this relationship such that using a camera during virtual meetings will be more fatiguing for women and newer members of the organization. Results of 1,408 daily observations from 103 employees supported our proposed model....”
I teach at a university and, since early last year, have been working exclusively from home. An interesting change has occurred in our online faculty meetings over that period. At first, when we were still getting used to videoconferencing, most meetings were conducted with most people’s cameras on. Over time, however, more and more of the meetings have been conducted with almost everyone keeping their cameras off; in many meetings, people turn their cameras on only when they are speaking and often not even then.
When we started teaching online last April, we were told not to require students to turn on their cameras during class (out of respect for their privacy), and it seems that most classes are indeed being conducted with the students’ cameras off. I personally find that frustrating; I am not as easily able to remember students as individuals, even in small classes, when I never see their faces. (Otherwise, I don't mind online teaching at all.)
For faculty meetings, though, I haven't heard any complaints about cameras being off, and the meetings seem to be as effective online with limited video as they used to be when conducted in person.
In one-on-one conversations, both cameras are usually on. I, at least, find that works as well as in-person conversations, and I much prefer one-on-one videoconferencing to telephone conversations.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#6I think it's because, in real life, you can tell who's looking at you and when. There's key components of body language that are based in who is paying attention to who. In a videoconference, this is all missing. You can't tell who's looking at you or not, so that mean anyone could be looking at you, so you act like everyone is looking at you all the time, you feel the need to control your presentation more, that causes fatigue.
Real-world group conversations are not like that at all. If you're tired or you have nothing to say, you can just be in a corner listening to other people speak, nobody will mind, and you don't feel observed. That's a lot more like when you have your camera off.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#7Several people on our team do not turn-on video during meetings. I also do not like to turn-on video for our stand-up calls - those are fact oriented and whatever I'm saying is sufficient to convey the details (one-on-one meetings would be a different scenario). Citrix on Linux seems to have issues exposing external webcams and this has worked to my advantage because once I found out about this issue, I simply presented that as the reason and for once, treatment of Linux as a second class citizen worked out to be in my favour.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#8Why — though in the early days of interlace's internetted teleputers that operated off largely the same fiber-digital grid as the phone companies, the advent of video-telephoning (a.k.a. 'videophony') enjoyed an interval of huge consumer popularity — callers thrilled at the idea of phone-interfacing both aurally and facially (the little first-generation phone-video cameras being too crude and narrow-apertured for any…
Maybe this is a cultural thing? My girlfriend is Chinese and I've never seen her do a "call" that wasn't actually a video call on WeChat. Japan also has had video calling for much longer than it took Apple to popularize FaceTime over here in the West. They were also ahead on VoD, for long train rides, I suppose, due to mass transit being more popular.
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#9It feels like there are far too few controls on this study for anything other than "more research is required" conclusions.
Notably:
1. Did fatigued and non-fatigued users participate in the same style of camera display? Were they held in presentation, face to face, or "Brady Bunch" mode? Did users have self-view on, shrunk, or off?
2. Of the 100ish participants selected, where is the control group who received no guidance on when to turn cameras on or off? Do they have a similar variation in fatigue between genders and weeks?
3. It seems odd that the gender variance in fatigue was selected for review and the managerial / employee division was not. Given that 45% of the sample was supervisory this would have been a useful element to understand. One would normally expect that supervisors will be less fatigued by video camera use as it may be their policy, or they may have more experience.
A related take on the topic (albeit without a field experiment) can be found at https://tmb.apaopen.org/pub/nonverbal-overload/release/2
Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]
#10I think it's because, in real life, you can tell who's looking at you and when. There's key components of body language that are based in who is paying attention to who. In a videoconference, this is all missing. You can't tell who's looking at you or not, so that mean anyone could be looking at you, so you act like everyone is looking at you all the time, you feel the need to control your presentation more, that cau…
I don't do video calls, but my partner does them often for work. The other day she mentioned that you're able to see who is looking at your video feed because their eyes looks directly at you (akin to them looking into the webcam).
I'm not sure if she was mistaken, or if there's some kind of eye tracking/image processing stuff going on to do this. FYI it was Microsoft Teams.