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The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

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Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#151

Post by prepend »

piva00 wrote: post #144
Jenk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you just melt when in the office?

No, I like offices, I'm a very outspoken and outgoing person, I enjoy social interactions. I don't like a camera pointing at my face . It's not that difficult to see that this is a very different experience than sharing an office. And I'm tired of repeating this.

I’m sure this doesn’t apply to you at all, but cynically, I just feel that when I hear these weird to me reasons that I can’t understand, I just assume the person hasn’t showered in a week.

I had female coworker confide to me that she didn’t like turning her camera on because it takes 40 minutes to apply her makeup every day. So she only does it for important meetings, but otherwise leaves the camera off.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#152

Post by Zababa »

charcircuit wrote: post #148
Lutger wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perceived the need to keep the camera off during a meeting is a good indication there is something wrong with the meeting, not that it's a good thing to keep the camera off. We had some recurring meetings where people consistently didn't show up. The managers first impulse was to make the meeting mandatory. But the first thought should be: why are people not showing up? Engineers hate being unproductive, it shoul…

Coming from the the game modding scene meetings never have webcams. It's always just voice calls. Using a video camera is such a foreign idea to me. I don't even own a web camera for my PC. Another weird thing to me is people using other's real names. It's just taboo to use people's real names instead of their screen names. Even my boss and the owners of the company I refer to by their screen name.

Same thing for me, although I'm not coming from the game modding scene but from the "made friends online". Webcams have never really been a thing between me and my friends.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#153

Post by prepend »

incrudible wrote: post #130

Another benefit of just keeping cameras off is that it reduces the impact of lookism, which is exacerbated by camera distortion and unfavorable lighting. Of course, this puts stronger emphasis on audible cues. You may not realize it, but people can hear you smile. This is a bit anecdotal: People on the ASD spectrum may perform better on just auditory stimuli versus audio-visual integration. There's certainly a trade-…

Wouldn’t cameras off increase the impact of soundism?

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#154

Post by dabbledash »

matsemann wrote: post #68
hnzix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are probably the same people who care if I leave the office on time instead of staying late every night. I don't care to please these people.

It's not. Why do you have to assign other bad qualities to people you disagree with? Just to make it easier on yourself to disagree?

>> Why do you have to assign other bad qualities to people you disagree with?

Yes, inferring bad motives to other people is bad. We should try to be charitable.

>> They might judge you and believe the reason you're not on camera is because you're busy doing something else.

Sounds like these people ^^^ are the ones who need to hear that message.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#155

Post by BlargMcLarg »

charcircuit wrote: post #148
Lutger wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perceived the need to keep the camera off during a meeting is a good indication there is something wrong with the meeting, not that it's a good thing to keep the camera off. We had some recurring meetings where people consistently didn't show up. The managers first impulse was to make the meeting mandatory. But the first thought should be: why are people not showing up? Engineers hate being unproductive, it shoul…

Coming from the the game modding scene meetings never have webcams. It's always just voice calls. Using a video camera is such a foreign idea to me. I don't even own a web camera for my PC. Another weird thing to me is people using other's real names. It's just taboo to use people's real names instead of their screen names. Even my boss and the owners of the company I refer to by their screen name.

It's rather baffling the business world likes to pretend our communities don't exist despite the fact online collab communities have been doing this since the early 2000s.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#156

Post by Kye »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #132
2wrist wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very true. Having the camera off also means that we miss out on lots of non-verbal cues. I can't tell you the amount of difficult meetings I have had where people are edgy when the camera is off. With it on there is often a more relaxed vibe as people don't get the wrong end of the stick as much.

This can go the other way as well, thinking visual cues imply X when they actually imply Y. On the other hand, one can resolve most of these scenarios by asking the other party to elaborate and to keep emotionally charged arguments / personalities off the table, rather than assuming their emotional state and trying to play off of it or feeling attacked.

This is a huge part of why I prefer text. It would be one thing if people could misread my face or voice, then take my word for it when I tell them what I actually mean. But what often happens is they dig in on thinking they've struck it rich on some deep insight into my psyche and proceed to tell me what I really think.

Not everyone is like this. I can have a great time with people who compare inputs, see they diverge, and weigh the one that provides the most charitable view higher. This is usually my actual words, which I've been told sometimes comes with a "tone" that sends all the wrong signals. It turns out a lot of people read my usual pace--which can be way too fast at first--as anger or annoyance. When people focus on the words, it's obvious (by their own account) that I'm calm and enjoying the conversation.

It's usually a cue to take a deep breath and slow down. But it's hard to remember to do that from the start, and not everyone is willing to let the tone go once I take that control. And then the deep breath becomes part of the imagined anger/annoyance. It's made me wary of voice and video chat, and wary of people who prefer it specifically because they want to use the way people look and speak to determine what's going on in their heads rather than pay attention to their words.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#157

Post by agustif »

pugworthy wrote: post #61

As someone who's partially deaf, I really appreciate camera on. It's a lot easier to understand people. I actually like Zoom meetings more than F2F at times, simply because everyone (with a camera) is equal - I see all their faces (and mouths) the same. F2F? Masks cover up faces, and we all have to stand far apart - horrible conditions for someone HoH.

Transcripts (Used them in google meets, didnt knew about zoom and teams) are awesome also for non native english speakers too!

Helps a great deal to have all (audio+video+text) to follow a conversation

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#158

Post by mkl »

piva00 wrote: post #140
mkl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel surveilled and every movement I do in front of it is calculated by my unconscious mind What do you do in in-person meetings? Or supermarket visits etc.? Everything you do is way more visible in those, and I've never heard anyone complain about being surveilled in person.

Do you feel the same way in front of a camera pointing to your face as you do on a normal day-to-day interaction with non-verbal cues, room to use body language to express yourself, etc.? It's not about the visibility, it's the psychological impact it has, having a camera pointed directly at my face 100% of the time is very different than sitting in a room, reading others' faces, attention (where are they focusing th…

Well, I don't understand, as the parallel seems obvious; you're meeting with a group of people and you can see them and they can see you. If anything I feel freer with the camera, as others' visibility of me is much more limited than in person. I like cameras in meetings for exactly what you say, reading others' faces, attention, body language, non-verbal cues, etc. Without being able to see people I find it much harder to understand them, and to be sure they're understanding me.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#159

Post by prionassembly »

jacobmischka wrote: post #43
matsemann wrote: post #27

To make a different point than all the camera naysayers so far: I I'd be WFH for two years during covid, and everyone had their cameras off, I'd go crazy. Not seeing a face for months, being stressed about the other party in a meeting not even paying attention, just speaking into a void etc.

It's extremely rude in my opinion when people simply don't turn their cameras on in virtual meetings. Unfortunately, no one at my workplace except me does.

I live with other people and it's not always polite to ask them to dance around my meetings schedule.

Re: The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings

#160

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Lutger wrote: post #98
kodah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: I'm a lead engineer on a team with six products. I keep my camera off in meetings. I'm in far more meetings than I can possibly be productive in. I'm also usually not the active speaker in meetings. Why stare into a camera when what my yearly bonuses are calculated on is work/team output? I've found most meetings I get into are either: - Developers who can't figure something out from documentation and a…

The perceived the need to keep the camera off during a meeting is a good indication there is something wrong with the meeting, not that it's a good thing to keep the camera off. We had some recurring meetings where people consistently didn't show up. The managers first impulse was to make the meeting mandatory. But the first thought should be: why are people not showing up? Engineers hate being unproductive, it shoul…

I was a tech manager for 25 years.

One of my basic policies was "no scheduled recurring meetings" (I'd think that scrum meetings count as those).

Meetings, for me, were "one-off" events, with focus on a particular, singular goal.

Of course, I worked for a Japanese company, so my policy didn't mean squat to the higher-ups. I had regularly-scheduled meetings; whether or not I wanted it. Many of these meetings were little more than "gab sessions," which was often a nice break from the grind, but had no other positive effect on the projects at hand.

Recently, on the project I'm developing, we had a problem, where the top brass allowed themselves to become complacent, and ignored my frequent status updates (I'm big on process transparency). This came to a head, one day, when they discovered that the product I was making, which had gradually reshaped to meet reality, had deviated from their original goals.

They decided on twice-weekly video meetings (usually only a half hour). This helped them to get a lot more involved. It does nothing at all, for me, but it does help me to keep the work I do "in their face."

As a result, they have changed their original goals, to meet the ground truth, and also has helped me to get important feedback from them.

The fact these meetings are short, and to the point, as well as just the two of us, helps a lot.

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