A theory of Zoom fatigue

Post by nikanj » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:38 AM UTC

jonshariat wrote: post #15

djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…

Agreed. After reading the title, I immediately thought of the Doherty Threshold [1]. It states that if the system can respond to user actions and give the user feedback within 400ms, it increases users’ attention and productivity. That constant delay, plus the worse ones when the connection loses strength, put a constant toll on "zoom" conversations. I think that is the main factor but many of the items they brought…

Post by sethammons » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #69

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and you’re constantly struggling to decipher audio and make yourself understood. Much like talking in a bar that’s too loud is exhausting. A lot of the exhaustion seems like it’s the difficulty of compensating for a high latency, low-bandwidth, low quality experience. We’re just not evolved for it—reality is the opposite of all of those things.

I get a similar kind of exhaustion when talking to assistants like Siri.

Post by killjoywashere » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:57 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #41

saurik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlines were so fast and so "direct" in their latency (where distance correlates very directly with time, due to a lack of "hops") that local phone calls were faster than the speed of sound across a table, and for a bit after they came out--before people generally got used to seemingly random latency--local calls felt "intimate", like as if you were talking to someone in bed with their head right next to you; I als…

I have very clear memories of my first overseas long-distance calls in the 1980s, which were over a satellite link. The latency was so pronounced (about half a second) that carrying out a conversation took quite a bit of practice. You almost had to carry out a formal protocol of handing over control of the line, as if you were on a walkie-talkie. I have equally clear memories of my first overseas calls carried by und…

Post by mh- » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 9:02 AM UTC

vosper wrote: post #76

lostdog wrote: post #18

Lots of normal things about human interaction are broken in Zoom meetings. * You can't have a normal conversation with that much delay. Every time you talk you're probably interrupting someone, and that starts to wear on you. * You can't have any side chats with your neighbors before and after the meeting, making everyone seem less like a person. * You can't tell who's looking at you, so you always feel like you have…

> if the layout is fixed, sound isn't coming from anywhere in particular, so you need to search around for who's talking. I’ve wondered about this - why aren’t individual speakers (people) each placed somewhere different on the stereo plane? Is it because the video is in front of us and having people sound like there coming from the sides could be distracting, by drawing our attention away from the screen? It must ha…

Post by unixhero » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 9:05 AM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #6

I don't know about those theories. I suspect something else. Do you remember landlines, and how responsive they were? You would say things back and fourth and the conversation just worked, even on three-way and conference calls? There was very little noticeable lag! Even in the early cellphone days, I'd often prefer using my landline. There was less lag. Cellphones felt like speakerphones where it tries to do that ca…