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Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

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Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#51

Post by OkayPhysicist »

sesm wrote: post #17

What can a person do to make Zoom calls less exhausting for themselves? I would be happy to hear any tips.

Cameras should rarely be used. They don't help, they just drastically add to the fatigue. Sound quality needs be kept as high as possible, which means everyone involved needs decent equipment. Comfortable, over-the-ear headsets, with either good built-in microphone arms, or standalone mics. Don't use VoIP providers that can't figure out basic noise reduction or over-compress the audio, and you'll be in a much more tolerable spot.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#52

Post by empyrrhicist »

eropple wrote: post #24

The biggest thing that leads to this, I think, is bad audio. Listening to shitty scratchy laptop microphones -- or even the comparatively-excellent Apple array microphones -- is deeply fatiguing. I notice a distinct difference in energy expended when I'm on a call with people who have low/zero background noise and decent-quality microphones, and others have noted that about me (as I'm also an audio engineer in my spa…

I had a colleague ask me of I had sound conditioning in my office and I felt so seen. Bad audio is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#53

Post by digitalabyss »

Zoom was great when everybody was working from home. Audio quality was never a problem. Everybody on my team are on high end macbook pros and in some cases had personal higher end podcast/streamer equipment. Your not squinting at a TV on the wall 15 feet away when someone is sharing their screen. Everybody was far more prompt for meetings since they where not physically changing locations or waiting for the people who had the conference room before them to vacate.

Its the hybrid mix that I can't stand. I remained a remote employee when everyone else was forced back into the office. Now I have no idea who is talking or who is in the room half the time. The AV setups in the conference rooms pick up any background conversations and amplify them. The cameras randomly are zooming in and out at the wrong person. Nobody is ever on time to the meetings anymore because they have to move between physical locations. There tends to be a conversation in progress when the conference room finally joins the call.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#54

Post by Philpax »

wkat4242 wrote: post #18
hotnfresh wrote: post #7

We got accustomed to it, but it never stopped feeling super weird, I think, somewhere deep in our heads. A wall of faces staring at your neck is not what any real in-person thing feels like. A wall of facings looking in your eyes isn’t, either, for that matter, but the constantly-averted-gazes do add even more to the weirdness. You don’t feel so constantly watched in person, unless you’re doing a presentation. I did…

This is why I love meetings in VR so much. Even though the avatars don't look realistic, the feeling of being together is so much stronger. It's just so hard to convince others before them having tried it. You can't tell someone what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.

+1. I’m looking forward to it becoming more commonplace as Apple get Vision into more hands - communicating in XR is way less fatiguing for me as there’s more spatial cues and body language. You can look at the speaker, it’s easier to tell when you can butt in, you can split off easily, etc. It’s much closer to the feeling in chatting in person.

I just hope Zuck doesn’t continue to make it look unpalatable - that’s why I’m hoping Apple will build a consumer-acceptable solution that will force Meta to get their act together.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#56

Post by whiddershins »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #45
eropple wrote: post #24

The biggest thing that leads to this, I think, is bad audio. Listening to shitty scratchy laptop microphones -- or even the comparatively-excellent Apple array microphones -- is deeply fatiguing. I notice a distinct difference in energy expended when I'm on a call with people who have low/zero background noise and decent-quality microphones, and others have noted that about me (as I'm also an audio engineer in my spa…

No one should be using built in audio IO on their laptops. A proper headset, with a relatively nice attached mic should be considered minimum viable equipment for VoIP calls, and companies should as such supply them, just like they do laptops.

What’s sad is that the relatively expensive and high end apple Bluetooth headsets also sound awful.

Blame Bluetooth blame whatever, but AirPods Pro and AirPods Max should sound incredible at their price point. And they just don’t. They sound obviously filtered and robotic.

And also the latency they add is a problem.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#57

Post by kcb »

aaronscott wrote: post #50
eropple wrote: post #24

The biggest thing that leads to this, I think, is bad audio. Listening to shitty scratchy laptop microphones -- or even the comparatively-excellent Apple array microphones -- is deeply fatiguing. I notice a distinct difference in energy expended when I'm on a call with people who have low/zero background noise and decent-quality microphones, and others have noted that about me (as I'm also an audio engineer in my spa…

During a job interview I was asked to teach something off the cuff. There were two interviewers in the meeting, so I decided to show the difference that a good mic with good placement can have on call quality. Switched from my nice mic that was one shaka[0] away, to the laptop mic that was about two arm lengths away (maybe 8 shaka’s). They were shocked at the difference and one asked “is that what I sound like right…

All you really need is a proper headset with boom mic. Either USB or one with a proprietary dongle because 2-way bluetooth audio sounds terrible. I would think it's pretty common for companies to issue everyone a headset these days.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#58

Post by agumonkey »

Gigachad wrote: post #9
hotnfresh wrote: post #7

We got accustomed to it, but it never stopped feeling super weird, I think, somewhere deep in our heads. A wall of faces staring at your neck is not what any real in-person thing feels like. A wall of facings looking in your eyes isn’t, either, for that matter, but the constantly-averted-gazes do add even more to the weirdness. You don’t feel so constantly watched in person, unless you’re doing a presentation. I did…

I absolutely hate calls. WFH works well when you just need to grind out something solo, but it’s awful to communicate. Personally I go in the office 1-2 days a week. If you want to talk to me, do it in person those days. If you add me to some 10 person video call. I’m just going to zone out.

Strange how I felt zero difference. As long as sound is crisp clear it feels like we're in the same room.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#59

Post by eropple »

whiddershins wrote: post #56
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should be using built in audio IO on their laptops. A proper headset, with a relatively nice attached mic should be considered minimum viable equipment for VoIP calls, and companies should as such supply them, just like they do laptops.

What’s sad is that the relatively expensive and high end apple Bluetooth headsets also sound awful. Blame Bluetooth blame whatever, but AirPods Pro and AirPods Max should sound incredible at their price point. And they just don’t. They sound obviously filtered and robotic. And also the latency they add is a problem.

AirPods do sound quite acceptable if you're on a phone, I think. There's something weird about how they interact with macOS.

Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans

#60

Post by Gigachad »

selykg wrote: post #16
colechristensen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find meetings I shouldn’t have been invited to a great time to do the dishes. Likewise big status update meetings with low information content.

Wish that was easy for me. The people I work with seem to insist on having video on.

Because video off meetings are entirely pointless and just shouldn't be run. Not to say that turning video on magically makes the meetings have point, but if you are muted, video off, and doing the dishes, you just shouldn't be in that call.

Requiring video on probably makes people push back against being invited to useless meetings rather than seeing it as an hour to clean the house.

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