Don't turn off that remote video just yet

A year after we were forced into making our meetings remote, it’s not surprising that there is a growing body of research on the impact of endless video calls and recommendations on what to do about it. 

There are some really useful insights; but it’s worth being careful about what you take from the reported recommendations. Especiually when it comes to turning off your video.

First up, I wrote a couple of weeks ago about some research from Stanford University suggesting, on the basis of the psychological causes of Zoom fatigue, that turning off your camera is a good solution. The analysis was fascinating; and the awareness of what being constantly on video does to your brain and why it makes you tired is really valuable. It's definitely worth a read. 

But the recommendations which were all about turning the video off were, I felt, somewhat counter-productive as they all involved reducing engagement, which seemed to me to be the opposite of what was needed. As a sticking plaster to deal with badly conceived, designed, planned and facilitated meetings, the recommendations seem reasonable in terms of short term personal care. But, not surprisingly, I reckon designing meetings that mitigate the psychological stressors is a better way to make Zoom meetings less exhausting than telling people to opt-out when the badly run meeting gets to be too much to bear.

This week, another fascinating piece of research – this time from Carnegie Mellon University – also suggests that that it may be a good idea to turn off the video. And, like the Stanford piece, it's worth being careful about wat you take from how it is being reported.

The write-up on the University’s website suggests that video calls are less effective for group problem solving than are voice calls – and it concludes that: “It might be worth it to disable the video function in order to promote better communication and social interaction during collaborative problem-solving.” (Naturally, that is what the press are picking up.)

The premise of the article is the research finding that the nonverbal clues that enable the conversational turn-taking (synchrony) that is so important to effective collaboration are split into two elements – facial expression and prosodic (audio) –  and that ‘groups’ do better when using audio only. "Our study underscores the importance of audio cues, which appear to be compromised by video access" says Anita Williams Woolley

However, the research methodology involves only people talking in pairs; and you could imagine that visual cues are indeed less important when there are only two people involved. For larger groups, I’d argue that it would be materially different.

To be fair, the researchers don’t make the claim for bigger groups in the full research paper. They merely point towards the importance of audio clues and the additional research they recommend is to see whether the same is true of larger groups and whether regulating conversational behaviour could the make audio clues more effective (increase prosodic synchrony).

As you’ll know if you’ve attended my Playful Principles for Productive Meetings workshop, ‘regulating’ conversations for roughly equal airtime is one of the most important principles. But it goes further than that.

Non-verbal clues, whether visual or audio are important (and the need to think more actively about audio is an important contribution of this research).

I’d argue, though, that effective collaborative problem-solving in groups - as opposed to pairs - requires meetings to be planned, structured and actively facilitated for making the most of everyone participating. That might mean some time seeing the faces of particpants, and some time seeing their 'hands' (as they work on a whiteboard or Google Doc) while also connected to audio; and sometimes even rethinking what we use meetings for. 

All of which and more is what you'll learn if/when you join the next cohort of the Playful Principles for Productive Meetings workshop in April. 

More details and registration (including early booking discount) are here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/playful-principles-for-productive-meetings-open-training-tickets-132052038201

Don’t turn off that video, just yet.