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I think it's because, in real life, you can tell who's looking at you and when. There's key components of body language that are based in who is paying attentio

I think it's because, in real life, you can tell who's looking at you and when. There's key components of body language that are based in who is paying attention to who. In a videoconference, this is all missing. You can't tell who's looking at you or not, so that mean anyone could be looking at you, so you act like everyone is looking at you all the time, you feel the need to control your presentation more, that causes fatigue. Real-world group conversations are not like that at all. If you're tired or you have nothing to say, you can just be in a corner listening to other people speak, nobody will mind, and you don't feel observed. That's a lot more like when you have your camera off.

polishdude20 5y ago
This is why I almost always minimize my own video on my screen. Just seeing myself makes me really self conscious.
- sneak 5y ago
  Unless I’m presenting or speaking for more than an interjection, I generally turn off the sending of video. There’s little value (IMO) in 320p/720p low bitrate “facial expressions” which are just as often compression artifacts as they are information about emotional state. Maybe once video calls are routinely 1080p/2160p it will matter more, but 320p (the default for most systems today) at a low bitrate isn’t really doing much. You might as well shut it off unless you’re leading the meeting at that moment. Contrariwise, when you are speaking/presenting, use an external camera (the one in your laptop/ipad/phone is optimized for thickness and thus the lens sucks) and a good soft key light.
  - thecoppinger 5y ago
    > Contrariwise, when you are speaking/presenting, use an external camera (the one in your laptop/ipad/phone is optimized for thickness and thus the lens sucks) and a good soft key light. I recently did a fair bit of research into this exact setup and landed on a Logitech StreamCam and a Elgato Key Light. Well worth the money if you’re interested in achieving a high consumer grade level of quality, just be sure to purchase an adapter for the StreamCam as it is (infuriatingly) wired with a USB C connector.
    - sneak 5y ago
      I find it infuriating when things still use old, non-reversible USB. Everything I plug my Logitech 4K camera into has USB-C ports.
      - thecoppinger 5y ago
        That’s fair, but for something like a 1080 webcam used by amateur streamers, USBC seems like a poor choice. Perhaps there’s a bandwidth issue I’m missing.
  - fistynuts 5y ago
    720 is the default for Google Meet and gives a decent quality picture imo. There's definitely value in seeing others at that resolution - the restricting factor is people's unreliable or narrow bandwidth internet connection.
- Tarsul 5y ago
  also why I don't like seeing pictures of people everywhere (e.g. Outlook, WebEx), especially myself. It's not really useful information and only distracting. At least give us an option if we want to see all this stuff (in Outlook it's possible to hide profile pictures, in WebEx it's not).
desertraven 5y ago
I don't do video calls, but my partner does them often for work. The other day she mentioned that you're able to see who is looking at your video feed because their eyes looks directly at you (akin to them looking into the webcam). I'm not sure if she was mistaken, or if there's some kind of eye tracking/image processing stuff going on to do this. FYI it was Microsoft Teams.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Not at all true. For that to work, there would have to be, yes, eye tracking and a lot of image processing to change where your gaze appeared to be, but also knowledge of the physical size of the screen, the location of that particular person's feed on the screen, and where the screen is in relation to the camera. Now, it's possible that a lot of that could be inferred if it's assumed the screen is not moved in relation to the camera, and a lot of work went into tracking window locations even as you move things around, but that's a LOT of effort to expend for such a minor feature (let alone the uncanny valley effect if you don't get the image processing perfect, including the transitional "eye moved from the document you were looking at, to looking at them" - the software would have to somehow note that rather than just looking over an inch, you actually looked up 7 inches, and render that realistically). Easiest way to confirm this is not true, though (rather than just describe the challenge involved) - have a Zoom/Teams/whatever call 1-on-1. As you're talking to the person, and they're talking back to you, note where their eyes are. 95% of the time they're going to be below where your eyes would "meet", i.e., the camera is at the top of their monitor/laptop, and they're looking at you on screen. In fact, I've had some people -never- 'meet' my gaze, because they never become self-aware enough to "oh, I should look at my camera when I am talking".
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
    > In fact, I've had some people -never- 'meet' my gaze, because they never become self-aware enough to "oh, I should look at my camera when I am talking". I'm not sure that looking into the camera is that important in a one-to-one setting. I'm specifically not talking about a "broadcast", like when you address an assembly and the communication is expected to go both ways. To me, the reason why we look at a person when talking together is to see their reactions, and for them to see ours. Even in real life, and in particular when we speak, we don't look at the other person's eyes 100% of the time. So in the case of video chat, where the "eyes" (the camera) is completely separate from the face, looking into the eyes cuts you off from their reaction, as you'll only see it in your peripheral vision. However, even if you see their eyes never meet yours, you're able to infer whether they're looking at your video or reading something else. And the most important part, their reactions, is still there. To me, the whole point of video chat, as opposed to a phone call, is to have this additional channel of communication. If you're not looking at the person with whom you're talking, you might as well not use video at all.
makeitdouble 5y ago
I think there is also the cultural assumption that you could always be away doing something else when on a call remotely. For instance, when everyone is in the same room, you’re manifesting you dedicated your time to the meeting. From there, even if participants look at their mail or do something that might not be related, or just look bored, there is some leeway given by the fact they are there in the first place. In most remote settings, I find this leeway is way thinner, and it is less accepted to be distracted by something else, people will be apologizing in more specific ways to justify they weren’t listenning.
- mclightning 5y ago
  My manager would ask everyone would to raise their hands from keyboard randomly in a half-joking manner... to ensure everyone is focusing to the meeting, and not working. or, point out "hey you have something else on screen because white screenlight flashed on your face" Leaving this company in a month, although they're paying me 2x the local average SE salary here in Sweden.
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    There is nothing happy about working for control freaks, and slightly higher net salary won't magically turn it into a good place to work... sounds like a good idea to depart
    - nine_k 5y ago
      2x is not "slightly". You can see it as the amount of premium an employer has to pay to get away with things like that. A well-prepared meeting is fast-paced and keeps everyone genuinely involved.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    While calling it out like that is crass, I do wish people wouldn't do other things during meetings. I get that these meetings are presumably over-long, but perhaps that's because half the participants aren't actually paying attention...
tobr 5y ago
> You can't tell who's looking at you or not, so that mean anyone could be looking at you, so you act like everyone is looking at you all the time, you feel the need to control your presentation more, so you keep staring at your own image, which means everyone is staring at their own image, which means no one is looking at your image, which means you don’t need to care what you look like,
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  It's the Panopticon effect. It doesn't matter if there's somebody looking, what matters is that there may be, and you can't know.
frereubu 5y ago
This happened a lot with Zoom calls for my then-four-year-old daughter's classes too. All the kids hated it because they were looking at the picture of a friend and talking to them, but the friend didn't know they were so they weren't listening to them, and they all got incredibly frustrated. As adults we can have the theoretical knowledge about how these things work, but it does cut out a lot of helpful cues. For me, I also think the slight audio / video lag is really difficult in a similar way. It makes conversational fluency really hard, such as when you can interject, or knowing when someone has finished. It means that conversations tend to become a series of monologues, and that's a really tedious way of having a conversation.

polishdude20 5y ago

This is why I almost always minimize my own video on my screen. Just seeing myself makes me really self conscious.

sneak 5y ago
Unless I’m presenting or speaking for more than an interjection, I generally turn off the sending of video. There’s little value (IMO) in 320p/720p low bitrate “facial expressions” which are just as often compression artifacts as they are information about emotional state. Maybe once video calls are routinely 1080p/2160p it will matter more, but 320p (the default for most systems today) at a low bitrate isn’t really doing much. You might as well shut it off unless you’re leading the meeting at that moment. Contrariwise, when you are speaking/presenting, use an external camera (the one in your laptop/ipad/phone is optimized for thickness and thus the lens sucks) and a good soft key light.
- thecoppinger 5y ago
  > Contrariwise, when you are speaking/presenting, use an external camera (the one in your laptop/ipad/phone is optimized for thickness and thus the lens sucks) and a good soft key light. I recently did a fair bit of research into this exact setup and landed on a Logitech StreamCam and a Elgato Key Light. Well worth the money if you’re interested in achieving a high consumer grade level of quality, just be sure to purchase an adapter for the StreamCam as it is (infuriatingly) wired with a USB C connector.
  - sneak 5y ago
    I find it infuriating when things still use old, non-reversible USB. Everything I plug my Logitech 4K camera into has USB-C ports.
    - thecoppinger 5y ago
      That’s fair, but for something like a 1080 webcam used by amateur streamers, USBC seems like a poor choice. Perhaps there’s a bandwidth issue I’m missing.
- fistynuts 5y ago
  720 is the default for Google Meet and gives a decent quality picture imo. There's definitely value in seeing others at that resolution - the restricting factor is people's unreliable or narrow bandwidth internet connection.
Tarsul 5y ago
also why I don't like seeing pictures of people everywhere (e.g. Outlook, WebEx), especially myself. It's not really useful information and only distracting. At least give us an option if we want to see all this stuff (in Outlook it's possible to hide profile pictures, in WebEx it's not).

desertraven 5y ago

I don't do video calls, but my partner does them often for work. The other day she mentioned that you're able to see who is looking at your video feed because their eyes looks directly at you (akin to them looking into the webcam). I'm not sure if she was mistaken, or if there's some kind of eye tracking/image processing stuff going on to do this. FYI it was Microsoft Teams.

lostcolony 5y ago
Not at all true. For that to work, there would have to be, yes, eye tracking and a lot of image processing to change where your gaze appeared to be, but also knowledge of the physical size of the screen, the location of that particular person's feed on the screen, and where the screen is in relation to the camera. Now, it's possible that a lot of that could be inferred if it's assumed the screen is not moved in relation to the camera, and a lot of work went into tracking window locations even as you move things around, but that's a LOT of effort to expend for such a minor feature (let alone the uncanny valley effect if you don't get the image processing perfect, including the transitional "eye moved from the document you were looking at, to looking at them" - the software would have to somehow note that rather than just looking over an inch, you actually looked up 7 inches, and render that realistically). Easiest way to confirm this is not true, though (rather than just describe the challenge involved) - have a Zoom/Teams/whatever call 1-on-1. As you're talking to the person, and they're talking back to you, note where their eyes are. 95% of the time they're going to be below where your eyes would "meet", i.e., the camera is at the top of their monitor/laptop, and they're looking at you on screen. In fact, I've had some people -never- 'meet' my gaze, because they never become self-aware enough to "oh, I should look at my camera when I am talking".
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  > In fact, I've had some people -never- 'meet' my gaze, because they never become self-aware enough to "oh, I should look at my camera when I am talking". I'm not sure that looking into the camera is that important in a one-to-one setting. I'm specifically not talking about a "broadcast", like when you address an assembly and the communication is expected to go both ways. To me, the reason why we look at a person when talking together is to see their reactions, and for them to see ours. Even in real life, and in particular when we speak, we don't look at the other person's eyes 100% of the time. So in the case of video chat, where the "eyes" (the camera) is completely separate from the face, looking into the eyes cuts you off from their reaction, as you'll only see it in your peripheral vision. However, even if you see their eyes never meet yours, you're able to infer whether they're looking at your video or reading something else. And the most important part, their reactions, is still there. To me, the whole point of video chat, as opposed to a phone call, is to have this additional channel of communication. If you're not looking at the person with whom you're talking, you might as well not use video at all.

makeitdouble 5y ago

I think there is also the cultural assumption that you could always be away doing something else when on a call remotely. For instance, when everyone is in the same room, you’re manifesting you dedicated your time to the meeting. From there, even if participants look at their mail or do something that might not be related, or just look bored, there is some leeway given by the fact they are there in the first place. In most remote settings, I find this leeway is way thinner, and it is less accepted to be distracted by something else, people will be apologizing in more specific ways to justify they weren’t listenning.

mclightning 5y ago
My manager would ask everyone would to raise their hands from keyboard randomly in a half-joking manner... to ensure everyone is focusing to the meeting, and not working. or, point out "hey you have something else on screen because white screenlight flashed on your face" Leaving this company in a month, although they're paying me 2x the local average SE salary here in Sweden.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  There is nothing happy about working for control freaks, and slightly higher net salary won't magically turn it into a good place to work... sounds like a good idea to depart
  - nine_k 5y ago
    2x is not "slightly". You can see it as the amount of premium an employer has to pay to get away with things like that. A well-prepared meeting is fast-paced and keeps everyone genuinely involved.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  While calling it out like that is crass, I do wish people wouldn't do other things during meetings. I get that these meetings are presumably over-long, but perhaps that's because half the participants aren't actually paying attention...

tobr 5y ago

> You can't tell who's looking at you or not, so that mean anyone could be looking at you, so you act like everyone is looking at you all the time, you feel the need to control your presentation more, so you keep staring at your own image, which means everyone is staring at their own image, which means no one is looking at your image, which means you don’t need to care what you look like,

marcosdumay 5y ago
It's the Panopticon effect. It doesn't matter if there's somebody looking, what matters is that there may be, and you can't know.

frereubu 5y ago

This happened a lot with Zoom calls for my then-four-year-old daughter's classes too. All the kids hated it because they were looking at the picture of a friend and talking to them, but the friend didn't know they were so they weren't listening to them, and they all got incredibly frustrated. As adults we can have the theoretical knowledge about how these things work, but it does cut out a lot of helpful cues. For me, I also think the slight audio / video lag is really difficult in a similar way. It makes conversational fluency really hard, such as when you can interject, or knowing when someone has finished. It means that conversations tend to become a series of monologues, and that's a really tedious way of having a conversation.