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Zoom fatigue is real

popsci.com

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Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#31

Post by posedge »

tootie wrote: post #16

As someone who has worked with remote teams for years and has spent many, many hours in Zooms and the like, my advice is to get used to it because it's great. I used to dread conference calls. I can't stand listening to a room where I can't see faces. I never know what people are thinking. What I really can't understand is the people who hate turning on their cameras yet will greet me with a smile and a handshake in…

Adding to the points of others, you also feel "watched". In a real meeting, it doesn't feel like there is a spotlight on your face the whole time.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#32

Post by rectang »

longtom wrote: post #17

> Zoom fatigue is real. What's the evidence for this? I believe there is a psychological effect that people report more malaise when you ask them about it. Back when I first studied psychology I self-diagnosed myself with like 5 different mental defects. Confirmation bias and hypochondriasis?

Consider that as audio quality gets worse and worse eventually becoming indecipherable (from latency, dropouts, distortion...), it takes increasing effort to understand what is being said. The curve is non-linear, but the direction of the correlation is clear.

There is no question that auditory fatigue is real. The question is only to what extent poor audio is a contributing factor to "Zoom Fatigue".

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#33

Post by rectang »

replyifuagree wrote: post #29

I telecommuted for years and almost never used a webcam. A shared desktop has way more potential for something really interesting and valuable being displayed. Watching hoards of people hop on webcams to transmit choppy video information about their face and home seems like wasted bandwidth to me. Edit: addendum, get a headset, transmitting voice clearly with some decent noise cancellation is really important. I buy…

Getting a headset is important, but it doesn't help with latency. That huge amounts of latency are somehow considered acceptable in these communication channels drives me mad.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#34

Post by take_a_breath »

longtom wrote: post #17

> Zoom fatigue is real. What's the evidence for this? I believe there is a psychological effect that people report more malaise when you ask them about it. Back when I first studied psychology I self-diagnosed myself with like 5 different mental defects. Confirmation bias and hypochondriasis?

There are a bunch of articles about it. National Geographic [1], Harvard Business Review [2], BB [3]. One of the theories is that we have to work harder to pick up on non-verbal cues, which consumes energy.

A data point from the BBC article: "One 2014 study by German academics showed that delays on phone or conferencing systems shaped our views of people negatively: even delays of 1.2 seconds made people perceive the responder as less friendly or focused."

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavir...

[2] https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-to-combat-zoom-fatigue

[3] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video...

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#35

Post by dhimes »

lukethomas wrote: post #9

The solution to Zoom fatigue is to eliminate meetings where the purpose is to share basic facts & information. Save meetings for collaboration, relationship-building, and working on thorny problems.

Agree. In fact, I just made a video pointing out to managers that it's their job to manage "Zoom Fatigue."

And if the siblings are right, and the OP is using the term to speak only of fatigue due to bad audio then OP has misappropriated the term.

I'll link the vid in my profile if anyone cares.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#36

Post by replyifuagree »

rectang wrote: post #33
replyifuagree wrote: post #29

I telecommuted for years and almost never used a webcam. A shared desktop has way more potential for something really interesting and valuable being displayed. Watching hoards of people hop on webcams to transmit choppy video information about their face and home seems like wasted bandwidth to me. Edit: addendum, get a headset, transmitting voice clearly with some decent noise cancellation is really important. I buy…

Getting a headset is important, but it doesn't help with latency. That huge amounts of latency are somehow considered acceptable in these communication channels drives me mad.

Yeah, I'm in agreement that voice latency has to be fixed. We would switch to text chat rather than deal with voice latency.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#37

Post by bentcorner »

FYI, if you have an NVIDIA card on your machine, you can run their voice filtering software: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice...

It works for non-RTX cards as well with some tweaking (https://arstechnica.com/?post_type=post&p=1670164). Works marvelously for removing background noise - mic hum, typing, cars driving by.

One of the nice things about it is that you can also filter the output on your end - so if you're in a meeting with someone who is sitting outside near a busy road, or they have a roommate who is gaming on a mechanical keyboard, you can filter the noise out without missing something if that person decides to speak up.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#38

Post by thrower123 »

mseidl wrote: post #12

Am I the only one that really hates being on webcam?

I don't really get the point of keeping video open. I'm always either looking at emails, a shared desktop, an issue tracker, or some kind of document while we are on calls. Seeing people sip coffee and pick their nose doesn't really add anything except bandwidth.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#39

Post by ketamine__ »

bentcorner wrote: post #37

FYI, if you have an NVIDIA card on your machine, you can run their voice filtering software: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice... It works for non-RTX cards as well with some tweaking ( https://arstechnica.com/?post_type=post&p=1670164 ). Works marvelously for removing background noise - mic hum, typing, cars driving by. One of the nice things about it is that you can also filter the output…

I've been using Krisp.ai for several months now. It works well.

Re: Zoom fatigue is real

#40

Post by earthscienceman »

bentcorner wrote: post #37

FYI, if you have an NVIDIA card on your machine, you can run their voice filtering software: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice... It works for non-RTX cards as well with some tweaking ( https://arstechnica.com/?post_type=post&p=1670164 ). Works marvelously for removing background noise - mic hum, typing, cars driving by. One of the nice things about it is that you can also filter the output…

There has to be a non-NVIDIA solution to this doesn't there?
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