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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]

#51

Post by blitzar »

How about "The Fatiguing Effects of In-Person Meetings"?

> popular press discussion of virtual meeting fatigue (i.e.,“Zoom fatigue”), described as a feeling of being drained and lacking energy following a day of virtual meetings.

I am sure I am not the only person to have felt the effects of so-called 'meeting fatigue', being drained and lacking in energy following a day of sitting in meetings in person.

This piece reminds me of several 'The impact of working from home' pieces that seem to assume two states exist, working from home or doing nothing.

Yes working from home has had an impact, but so did waking up at 5am and standing on a packed commuter train for 45 minutes, before wedging into an uncomfortable fluorescent cubicle for 8 hours, making sure you were 'seen', before turning around and packing into the train with the same people from the morning all over again.

If you are in 'zoom meetings' back to back all day then I assume pre covid / wfh you either were in 'in-person meetings' back to back all day or have inserted a large number of additional meetings that did not exist before.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#52

Post by sneak »

polishdude20 wrote: post #23
snek_case wrote: post #6

I 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…

This is why I almost always minimize my own video on my screen. Just seeing myself makes me really self conscious.

Unless I’m presenting or speaking for more than an interjection, I generally turn off the sending of video. There’s little value (IMO) in 320p/720p low bitrate “facial expressions” which are just as often compression artifacts as they are information about emotional state.

Maybe once video calls are routinely 1080p/2160p it will matter more, but 320p (the default for most systems today) at a low bitrate isn’t really doing much. You might as well shut it off unless you’re leading the meeting at that moment.

Contrariwise, when you are speaking/presenting, use an external camera (the one in your laptop/ipad/phone is optimized for thickness and thus the lens sucks) and a good soft key light.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#53

Post by FriedrichN »

Virtual meetings are usually much shorter, so in my experience a lot less fatiguing than IRL meetings (especially if I have to drive somewhere). Long meetings, virtual or in meatspace are always fatiguing. And they're very unnecessary almost all of the time.

But I prefer it when people have their camera on, that way I can tell whether or not they're engaged or not. And because of this 'being watched' effect meetings tend to be shorter.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#54

Post by Tarsul »

polishdude20 wrote: post #23
snek_case wrote: post #6

I 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…

This is why I almost always minimize my own video on my screen. Just seeing myself makes me really self conscious.

also why I don't like seeing pictures of people everywhere (e.g. Outlook, WebEx), especially myself. It's not really useful information and only distracting. At least give us an option if we want to see all this stuff (in Outlook it's possible to hide profile pictures, in WebEx it's not).

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#55

Post by liotier »

Our (large French telco) remote practice, inherited from when we switched to flex office a couple of years before COVID: almost never video but almost always screen sharing. I feel that screen sharing is a much more productive use of screen real estate !

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#56

Post by ahartmetz »

dylan604 wrote: post #16
lnanek2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Asia has long been ahead of the West in video formats, and audio. Most of those formats were made there, so it stands to reason. What is curious is why it took so long to get popular in the West.

What do you mean with "most of those formats were made there"? The only thing I can think of is early digital video camera codecs. Even when these were created, MPEG-1 and H.261 had been around for years.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#58

Post by bongoman37 »

lostcolony wrote: post #24
desertraven wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not at all true. For that to work, there would have to be, yes, eye tracking and a lot of image processing to change where your gaze appeared to be, but also knowledge of the physical size of the screen, the location of that particular person's feed on the screen, and where the screen is in relation to the camera. Now, it's possible that a lot of that could be inferred if it's assumed the screen is not moved in relat…

This doesn't even account for the number of people who have multimonitor setups and no particular connection between camera position and where the call window might be.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#59

Post by eloeffler »

blitzar wrote: post #51

How about "The Fatiguing Effects of In-Person Meetings"? > popular press discussion of virtual meeting fatigue (i.e.,“Zoom fatigue”), described as a feeling of being drained and lacking energy following a day of virtual meetings. I am sure I am not the only person to have felt the effects of so-called 'meeting fatigue', being drained and lacking in energy following a day of sitting in meetings in person. This piece r…

True, this is often compared to the "traditional" way off physical meetings without reflecting that they can laso be seen as an alternative to something else istead of being something like the baseline.

And there actually is meeting fatigue caused by often badly ventilated meeting rooms.

Re: The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings [pdf]

#60

Post by bamboozled »

One thing I find that's different is that it's harder to do simple stuff like go to the toilet on the video call.

When I used to be in a physical meeting, I'd get up and leave the room if there was a lull in conversation, it signaled I had left.

On a zoom call, you could go to the toilet with your headphones or whatever, but it's harder to get a gap in conversation (there's always a speaker), and I don't like to trust mute with a poop.

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