Yes, it is! I've written about the contributing factors (and some remedies): https://leadership.garden/zoom-fatigue/
Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
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Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
It's not just Zuck who makes it unpalatable. It's also the users who have tried a 30 second rollercoaster video on a google cardboard years ago and go like "I tried that virtual reality thing and it was useless". As someone who deploys this in enterprise environments I get this far too much.
I've done some pilots with serious VR meeting software like Arthur and Spatial (before they reinvented themselves as a "generic" metaverse tool). It's not for every call, no. But for the more proactive brainstorming / whiteboard session it's great. Especially as devices start having more sensor for body, face, eye tracking. You really feel like you're with the others. Really great option to replace a long flight you were going to make for a half-day workshop. So much more better than a zoom call. The detractors often point at the poor legless avatars but in my opinion that's something that gets forgotten quickly as you actually start communicating.
It's really hard to actually make people start using it though. And yes Zuck is burning way too much money on the wrong things. After all those billions Horizons still looks worse than VRChat, I mean really, how much did they spend? Can't be more than a few million.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> the feeling of being together is so much stronger I hope there will be a way to convert voice into a realistic behaving VR avatar, no equipment needed other than a mic. For example if I say "ok John, I like that idea", my avatar automatically faces John and locks eyes. For most of the meeting I'm not speaking anyway so my avatar could just look at whoever is speaking and look interested.
Well if you are in VR you already will lock eyes with whomever you're looking at. Especially if your headset has eye tracking. You will not talk to someone behind you ("Soap opera talking") as it feels just as weird as in real life. Also your hands are mirrored in the virtual world and you can easily flip the bird, clap your hands and more friendly gestures too :)
Or perhaps you mean the boring MS Teams avatars you can use to replace video, they are indeed pretty bored looking all the time and not responding to your voice activity at all but I heard at Ignite that they are getting some upgrades.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since one of my friend groups now resides primarily online due to general diaspora, I'd say there are adaptions that make VoIP a lot better. Right off the bat, good quality VoIP calls are vastly better than phone calls, because the compression on phones combined with typically rather shitty audio equipment creates an environment where subtle tonal queues are completely absent. Discord's audio is fantastic, but so is…
> Discord's audio is fantastic, but so is Mumble's, a FOSS VoIP solution, so I have no idea how big companies like Microsoft can't figure it out. Oh Microsoft figured it out. They just made the quality subtly worse vs Zoom. Jumping from a Zoom meeting to a Teams one, especially with the same people, amplifies this a bit.
They can't even do audio feedback rejection. On Firefox I have to use a headphone.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#95http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45374-y
Based on ECG and EEG. n=35.
I wonder if eye strain doesn't blend into it too. Focusing on a screen is exhausting, and a clear difference from in-person meetings across a table. If you're a computer worker, having regular in-person meetings might be good for this reason too.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#96Room fatigue is real as well.
Try working in a noisy environment concentrating while other people talk and make general noise.
I'll take Zoom fatigue any day.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My company issued everyone headsets, and the audio is night-and-day difference, but maaaaaaan I hate wearing a headset.
I wish. I take some amount of pride in having pretty solid video and audio for meetings. I get stuck with people using their awful macbook microphones and webcams, and most don't bother with headphones.
Then they wonder why everyone hates meetings.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#98What can a person do to make Zoom calls less exhausting for themselves? I would be happy to hear any tips.
- Take a long break during the day - Take short breaks throughout the day, like getting coffee/water, etc. - Turn off self view! - If you code, try to cluster your meetings together to reduce context switching. Block focus time on your calendar to avoid drive-by meetings that break up these clusters. - Invest in good headphones and a good mic. Others might have bad sound quality but you definitely won't. Also, it wil…
> - Take a long break during the day
Your status goes yellow and you're fired.
>- If you code, try to cluster your meetings together to reduce context switching. Block focus time on your calendar to avoid drive-by meetings that break up these clusters.
If you code, you don't have enough authority to do this.
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#99Zoom Fatigue? Why not call it "Video Conference Fatigue"?
It sounds like FUD
Re: Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because many meetings that involve many people are entirely pointless for the majority invited, period, regardless of format. Many of the people for whom the meeting is pointless are usually in no position to push back on it.
Just don’t go