“What even is time, anymore?”
I’ve seen and made many variations of this joke across Slack, twitter and meetings this week. Remote working and social isolation has disrupted all of our routines and left us feeling adrift. But, for those of us lucky enough to have good connectivity, we’re certainly not talking or seeing each other any less. I’ve ended several days this week hoarse from talking.
The number of people playing with avatars, virtual backgrounds and buying green screens speaks to the level of engagement with video meetings and chat. Of course, there’s also the memes.
By the way, Disney are sharing a nice line in backgrounds. But I have my own favourites.
In team catch-ups this week, a few people have remarked how, despite all the meetings and check-ins, they just didn’t feel as engaged. Key decisions or outcomes were not sinking in. People struggled to remember who was on a particular call. This isn’t surprising. Neither the general situation nor the medium we’re using is really great for focus and connection.
The comments have made me more conscious of the limitations of the software we’re using.
For example, one of the nice features of Zoom is the “gallery view” so you can see everyone on the call. Or at least until your call is so large that you end up with several pages of attendees. It makes it really easy to read the room when chairing. Contrast that with hangouts which doesn’t have the same feature. This makes it so much harder to gauge reactions in a discussion, identify people who want to raise questions, or even just catch when someone has had a connectivity problem.
General presence notifications are also a problem. In a drop-in meeting this week, it was only a little way into the call that I realised that we had 17 people in the discussion. That level of participation was so much easier to gauge when we were all sat around tables in the office kitchen.
We tried out Remo recently too. It has a cute office layout that facilitates break-out discussions and you can easily move between chats. I think it’s great for some types of meetings. But it didn’t create quite the same atmosphere for having drinks with the team than a raucous, messy hangout.
I think the thing that I’ve personally been struggling with is that you can’t look anyone in the eye on a video call.
Now, I’m usually terrible at looking people in the eye. In a conversation with me, you’ll find I’m typically looking around as I’m talking. It helps me think. Although when I’m listening, I’m much more attentive to others. But being able to look someone in the eye to read their reactions, look for agreement, or just to enjoy a joke is something that we can’t easily do at the minute. And I miss it.
Some people struggle with direct eye contact. Some people like the freedom to look away, fidget or play with a stress toy when listening. We’re all wired differently. Eye contact isn’t always necessary or desirable. But there’s lots of research exploring the effects of eye contact, which notes some potential impacts on memory and prosocial behaviour.
While tools like Zoom need to fix their security flaws before adding features, I’m hoping this period will lead to more user research and product development. So that we have much better and more secure tools. There’s plenty of room for innovation. Although like others I don’t think that attention correction is what we need. But I’d love to read more about interesting experiments with online presence and remote working tools.
It’s important to remember – as ever when we choose to make something digital – that many of these challenges are a fact of life for people with disabilities, who may be relying on remote participation in events and meetings.
In the meantime there’s a few things we can all do to improve our meetings. Choose the right tool. Find ways to stay in contact with everyone on the call. Take notes. Share key decisions afterwards (duh!)
And, if you’re using multiple monitors, maybe put the video call on the same desktop as your webcam. Or think about putting your webcam near your screen. Then we can at least glance in each others’ directions.
Lost Boy 