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It's...something. But it still doesn't feel quite right. A formal "raise hand" button feels too clumsy of a replacement for the natural body language we use to
by phailhaus 6y ago
It's...something. But it still doesn't feel quite right. A formal "raise hand" button feels too clumsy of a replacement for the natural body language we use to imply that we want to jump in to say something. I don't want a button that "requests the floor", we need something more fluid than that.
Basically the situation we need to avoid is the example raised in the article, wherein two people stumble around each other trying to figure out who should speak and who should back off. The reason that happens is that both participants have no clue that the other person is about to speak until they already have.
Discord solves this beautifully with push-to-talk. Since I have to press the push to talk button _before_ I speak, the UI can hook into that to naturally indicate that I intend to speak just by lighting myself up. I can just hold down the button and wait for the current speaker to cede, or jump in myself at a suitable pause. This latter case is now possible since everyone in the chat can see that I am about to do that, rather than be caught by surprise. But more importantly, _I can back off myself_ just by letting go. In Teams, you'd have to "rescind" the raised hand explicitly (not even sure if this is possible).
Now combine this with a shared virtual space: everyone sees the same order of faces, and when someone pushes-to-talk, they move up. Everyone sees this at the same time, so it's much more natural for that person to start speaking!
- naniwaduni 6y agoAs a counterpoint, I feel that a lot of in-person meetings would be improved by having people discretely request the floor rather than relying on having your body language acknowledged. Certainly it would help for those of us to whom aggressive/imposing body language doesn't come as easily.
- phailhaus 6y agoThat's just reality: some people are not attentive and will steamroll others. It's up to us to jump in and help people get heard. If we start running into the same problems as real life, then we're going in the right direction. I think a "request the floor" button still has its place in much larger group events (imagine a seminar), but for small to medium meetings it's pretty overkill. The goal should be to lower the bar for fluid conversation, rather than to formalize it into a turn-taking process.