TORONTO – An influx of virtual meetings may not be the only factor causing millions of people during the COVID-19 “Zoom Fatigue” pandemic.
According to a group of US researchers, designing video conferencing apps can also destroy you.
Technology like Zoom – which rose from ten million users to more than 300 million in just a few months last year – places physical restrictions on users, requires more cognitive labor, can amount to an “all-day mirror” and forces everyone to stare at each other.
The composite physiological effects of these factors can be exhausting, say researchers from Stanford University in California, who have launched a new online study to measure Zoom fatigue.
“Zoom’s interface design constantly radiates faces to everyone, no matter who is speaking,” writes Jeremy N. Bailenson, a Stanford University communications professor, in a new article published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior.
“From a perceptual point of view, Zoom listeners effectively turn into speakers and stifle everyone with sight.”
THE ‘EYE-GAZE DANCE’
In a typical environment, people do not stare into each other’s eyes for that long. Think of an elevator or an Uber ride. We have developed social norms that make it OK to ward off your gaze for a long period of time.
In a meeting environment, people tend to use eye contact sparingly, said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab.
“Conversation is really like a can dance,” he told Zoom op Zoom on Wednesday. People often make eye contact, acknowledge the connection, look away and return at different intervals, partly because they are looked at, cause physiological arousal and wake up the nervous system.
THE ‘ALL-DAY MIRROR’
Video conferencing applications also require an increased ‘cognitive load’, which means users send and receive more clues than in normal settings, including the need to tune in to your camera, taking into account the volume of your voice, and to present more physical reactions such as nodding a speaker.
While it requires more physical considerations, Zoom meetings also require less of us physically and may feel restrained, researchers said. There is no pace in a room, interruptions of the water cooler or other movements that research shows can cause better performance during meetings. Instead, we cling to the “frustum”, the specific space in which the webcam frames the user.
Perhaps one of the bigger tensions for some video conferencing users was the Stanford researchers calling it a kind of ‘all-day mirror’. The default setting for video applications such as Zoom is to show the user a look at their own camera. Seeing the self can have positive outcomes, Hancock said, noting a study where researchers put a mirror in front of a candy bowl and found that people take more candy when there was no mirror.
“Sometimes we are reminded of who we are and what we are trying to be – a good person – who can be valuable. But if we just constantly look in the mirror, it can eventually lead to questions: ‘I do not look the way I want to look’, ‘I am not who I want to be’. It reminds us that we are not the ideal version, ”Hancock said.
REDUCTION REDUCE
There are some built-in strategies that video conferencing users can use to reduce the impact of Zoom fatigue, such as the “Hide self-esteem” button to avoid the “all-day mirror” effect. The researchers also recommend that you use an external webcam and keyboard to give more space from the screen and change your seat. They also suggest that you use only the audio feature on the apps, or simply pick up the phone when video is not needed.
“Phone calls have driven productivity and social connectivity for many decades, and only a minority of the calls have to face another’s to communicate successfully,” Bailenson wrote.
As part of the new online study, the Bailenson and Hancock team developed a new framework to measure Zoom fatigue in the hope that they can determine if any of these strategies can improve Zoom fatigue user reporting.