[HN Gopher] Why video calls are bad for brainstorming
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Why video calls are bad for brainstorming
Author : lnyan
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-05-03 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| stunt wrote:
| What bothers me the most about video conferencing software is
| when people talk over each other and you can only hear one of
| them properly.
|
| This is not a problem in multiplayer video games with voice chat
| because I think they somehow manage it with multiple simultaneous
| audio sources. I'm surprised that Zoom has not done that yet.
| Just do what video games do.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| The reason for this is because the conferencing system
| typically has an automixer setup which turns up the active
| speaker and turns down everyone else. That's why it's
| impossible to say have a group of people sing a song together
| on Zoom (ignoring latency) because the automixer will switch
| between different singers erattically as opposed to hearing
| them all at the same time. In typical videoconference setting
| with one person speaking at a time this feature typically makes
| sense.
|
| This kind of mixing won't work well in a game for obvious
| reasons, so the audio is sent direct. However, the game uses
| direction and distance based audio to make the sound more
| natural. E.g. if the player to your right speaks, the signal
| you hear will be panned to the right. Humans are great at
| identifying different voices coming from different directions -
| you can try this yourself by loading up some voices into a DAW
| and seeing the difference in intelligibility having them panned
| out vs mono.
|
| Note that this tech may work well in a VR meeting room or
| something but it won't in a regular monural video call. Also
| the user will need a proper stereo setup (headphones or
| speakers a reasonable distance apart) for this to work.
| aeternum wrote:
| I think a huge improvement to zoom and other conferencing
| systems would be to place the other call participants in
| virtual 3d circle around each person. The human auditory
| system is great at reconstructing directional audio even just
| from a stereo source.
|
| You don't need a VR meeting room to simulate the same idea,
| it'd make the call so much realistic and easy to follow.
| ludwigvan wrote:
| I believe Zoom has that. You need to enable original audio.
|
| https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115003279466-Using...
|
| I think the catch is that people need to be on headphones for
| echo prevention, which might be the case for most of the
| gamers.
| hoosieree wrote:
| I hadn't even thought to tinker with this, because the auto-
| volume stuff is not _that_ annoying... but now that I know it
| 's there I'll try it out, so thanks for posting this!
| evocatus wrote:
| Global collaboration on software has existed for years before
| videoconferencing.
|
| All video calls are good for is exposing latent unconscious
| biases in your colleagues.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > All video calls are good for is exposing latent unconscious
| biases in your colleagues.
|
| Why do video calls expose that in particular?
| technovader wrote:
| Video calls shut my brain down
|
| Honestly there's very little good about video calls. I would
| prefer In-Person ideally, but if that is not possible, it is
| always more productive to just use slack or email. Or just a
| short audio call.
| r00fus wrote:
| I hardly use video on my meetings. I tend to use screenshare
| and voice only except in circumstances where a higher fidelity
| is required.
|
| I find working together on a document keeps attendees focused
| (along with a few tips/tricks like polling individuals,
| aligning current discussion with others' previously stated
| ideas and writing what people say as verbatim as possible)
| billti wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that video calls make it super-
| easy to context switch and do something else the minute the
| meeting becomes uninteresting (e.g. a topic that doesn't apply
| to you, or just a very dry discussion). Once your attention
| wanders elsewhere, its hard to reengage meaningfully.
|
| I love working from home more these days, but those days I do
| go into the office I find that meetings are way more engaging
| and productive. Being face-to-face with folks it's just much
| harder to disengage and focus attention elsewhere.
| fartcannon wrote:
| In one on ones, or small groups, maybe, but most of my
| meetings are just board rooms full of glassy eyed people,
| staring, trying not to look like they're going to fall
| asleep, caching JUST enough of what's being said to respond
| without looking entirely stupid if called on by the only
| person who actually cares about the meeting: the person
| running it.
|
| Most meetings can (and in my opinion should) be emails or
| chat messages. My rule is that I only go to meetings where
| there is a demonstration of some kind that cant be sent in an
| email, or cake.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Starting at 4:10, from the video:
|
| "People think there is more social connection.. ..but we
| found the exact opposite. So we found in the virtual
| condition, people are looking significantly more at their
| partner, almost double."
|
| If anything, the video suggests video calls are problematic
| because individuals focus too much on being presentable and
| looking at their conference partners, rather than putting
| their focus on the actual activity. Quite the opposite of
| tuning out deliberately (even if this is still possible).
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Which is why turning off self-view can make for a huge
| difference.
| technovader wrote:
| for me the biggest problem is how the flow of natural
| conversation is broken in video calls.
|
| 1 person gets to talk as long as they dont get interrupted or
| leave a long enough gap for other folks to speak up.
|
| its like talking but with a 5 second latency.
|
| so what ends up happening is people dont like to be rude, so
| they dont speak up unless theres a long gap of silence.
|
| but gaps dont happen because usually 1-2 people hoard the
| discussion, you know the type who never pause between
| sentences and drone on and on.
|
| in real life those people would be sidelined because people
| look away and have side conversations. but in a virtual
| meeting these people hijack every conversation for the entire
| hour
| chc wrote:
| Absolutely. Sometimes with coworkers I'm relatively close
| to, we'll have those side conversations in a Slack
| chat...but then that's just making the argument for Slack.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I constantly accidentally interrupt in video calls. I had a
| hard time with long distance on phones as a kid too.
|
| Not sure if I'm the problem or the tech.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Then that is a failure of the person running the meeting.
|
| You, as an individual, can also deploy several redirection
| techniques to shut those people down in either virtual
| meetings or in-person meetings.
|
| Tacit approval is either given by non-verbal
| acknowledgement (looking at them), vocalized agreement,
| e.g. "uhuh", "yeah", "and then what happened?", or by
| silence.
|
| I have an internal count that I do when someone starts
| talking and I become conscious of the interlocutor: "Hey, I
| need to interject, you raise a valid point about X but I
| have a question around it, <name of other participant>,
| what do you think of <completely unrelated subject>?"
|
| And you repeat the "Hey, I need to interject,hey, I have a
| question, Hey, I need to interject" until the other person
| stops long enough.
|
| Some days, you just have to be firm and get into the
| conversation.
|
| You can also just butt in with "Hey, that's interesting but
| it sounds like we are lost in the technical weeds, could we
| please take this offline or move it to a different
| meeting?" If the person running the meeting doesn't pick up
| on that, they shouldn't be running the meeting.
|
| I also like to drop in "Hey, I have to cut this short, I've
| got another meeting I need to run too, can we move this
| along?"
|
| People are very unaware when talking on the phone or in a
| video meeting. Like literally they become deaf. After three
| or four attempts of interjecting in a very short period of
| time of just 15 seconds or so, if the person isn't
| listening, I've just started talking directly to the
| meeting running directly over them and saying "we need to
| move on. Can you mute him?" It might be considered rude,
| but it's what everyone is thinking.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I still think this is much more of a problem with video
| calls. Sure, the person running the meeting _can_ take
| concrete steps to mitigate it slightly, but it 's still
| added friction relative to in-person sessions.
|
| What you are describing may be a better way to hold a
| generic video meeting but it does really highlight how
| bad video calls are for brainstorming in particular. What
| you are describing would be terrible for that.
| e_y_ wrote:
| My team has (not entirely consistently) tried to
| encourage people to use the "raise hand" button in the
| video call software if someone would like to speak. The
| currently person talking can either pause, or finish up
| what they're saying and then hand things over to the
| person who raised their hand.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Yes, that is a good method. But some are oblivious, and
| again, it comes down to the meeting runner to enforce
| that. "I need to cut in here, Justin has had his hand
| raised for some time and I want to address his points or
| questions before we wander away from the topic." Again,
| meeting running/manager needs to be firm. The people that
| drone on and on are frequently oblivious to everything
| except what they want to say next.
| greymalik wrote:
| > video calls make it super-easy to context switch and do
| something else the minute the meeting becomes uninteresting
|
| I'd argue that it's no different from in-person unless you
| ban laptops and cell phones from the meeting.
| robonerd wrote:
| I miss landline telephones. For whatever reason, the audio
| clarity of video conferencing still has not touched the quality
| we used to get out of old fashioned analogue over copper.
| thaway2839 wrote:
| One of the greatest challenges I'm facing running team meetings
| virtually is getting input from the less extroverted team
| members.
|
| When we had a meeting in a physical room, if I noticed someone
| hadn't said much, I could go "Hey John, any thoughts on this
| idea?", and it would largely be appreciated by John because it
| gave him an opportunity to speak in a room filled with other
| folks who were much better at getting their 2 cents in.
|
| However, doing the same thing on a video or voice call feels
| completely different. It feels like I'm calling out the person
| who has been quiet, and comes across as a psychologically
| negative experience both for me and for John.
| zabil wrote:
| Have you tried using break out rooms? We've tried grouping
| people to small groups (even as small as 2) and then regrouping
| to discuss further. It's not perfect, but does increase
| participation.
| Graffur wrote:
| It's also a negative experience in person. Lots of people like
| to listen, internalize and think rather than just speaking.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| On small to medium groups going "around the room" and asking
| everyone if they have anything to add can work without calling
| out one specific person. Of course not for every meeting type
| and situation.
| proc0 wrote:
| > We assessed idea selection quality using two different
| measures: (1) the 'creativity score' of the pair's selected
| idea23 and (2) the 'decision error score'--the difference in
| creativity score between the top scoring idea and the selected
| idea--where smaller values reflect a better decision
|
| Eh, I don't think creativity is so easily measured and also what
| they're calling creativity is incredibly narrow. As someone who
| went to art school, constraints are a huge part of being
| creative... when you ask a lot of artist what the "right" tool
| for their craft is, the answer is often "any tool you have will
| do"... being creative IS about doing more with less, and if you
| need to be face to face to do a proper brainstorming, perhaps you
| are not as creative as someone who can.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| We need to rid this idea that the tool is the problem. Look at
| the experiment they are doing. The room is so boring and
| controlled. It's like putting an animal in a cage and expecting
| them to behave the same as they would in the wild. They are also
| sourcing random students/people off the street. Not those who may
| thrive in a remote fashion.
|
| The most creative / brainstormed ideas come from when you're
| having fun with brilliant people. The best ideas for products
| I've ever had were in a restaurant, a bar, or at a fun
| event/party. Even as a remote employee, I also have similar ideas
| when playing games or catching up informally with co-workers
| online.
|
| I think we need to challenge this type of research given it's
| removing so many different senses that who would even try to be
| creative if your soul has already left the room before you began
| experiments? There's a reason why big tech companies have very
| colorful and vibrant offices. Would creativity increase as new
| ways of video calls become mainstream? i.e. metaverse, world of
| workcraft, etc.
| leakbang wrote:
| I share your viewpoint. I think having conversations in a fun
| environment like a lite videogame or a fun virtual hub would be
| the best thing for team building and creativity.
| gee_totes wrote:
| This is a big reason I got into Lego Serious Play
| z2h-a6n wrote:
| > We need to rid this idea that the tool is the problem.
|
| Do you have any scientific evidence (preferrably peer-reviewed)
| that the tool is not the problem? If not, it would seem to me
| to be a reasonable thing to study.
|
| > Look at the experiment they are doing. The room is so boring
| and controlled.
|
| If I am reading the paper correctly, the rooms being used by
| remote and in-person participants were identical. While they
| may be boring, the point was to control for the effect of the
| room, not to study it. It sounds like you are wishing for a
| different study.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| My comment was mocking scientific evidence as this study is
| pure science and not very practical from the human
| perspective. But yes there are plenty of studies and even
| studies on studies:
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3051058
|
| Specifically look at:
|
| Table 5. Categories and characteristics of the PWE
| influencing creativity
|
| It's very similar to how the more nature you bring into your
| working environment, the more "life" you bring into your
| work. We're humans, we're not meant to just sit in boring
| rooms all day and expect to be creative.
| hernantz wrote:
| I have the idea that brainstorming on a meeting is a waste of
| time. It is better to do it async. On a shared doc where people
| can comment and improve over a short period of time (like a week
| or so). Then, and only then, you can have a round of
| presentations or debates.
| benji-york wrote:
| There is some support for the idea that brainstorming as a
| group is less effective than individually:
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EYyS4AtRhNa6i299R_RB...
| compressedgas wrote:
| https://matthewstrom.com/writing/stop-brainstorming/
| pstuart wrote:
| Audio delay makes natural conversation unnatural.
| whateveracct wrote:
| But I had plenty of natural conversations in Ventrilo..made a
| lot of close friends.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Gaming voice products figured out the delay problem long ago
| (eg if you scream "flank" your team needs to respond ASAP).
| Video conference products are woefully behind.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I think gaming voice chat usually has a keyboard trigger.
| They solve echo cancellation by assuming microphones are
| usually off! Modern video conference software assumes users
| aren't using headphones, so they need sophisticated echo
| cancellation. Now, whether the delay is a side effect of
| noise cancellation, or one of the mechanisms is not clear
| to me.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Gaming voice chat (discord/teamspeak/other, not in-game)
| solved it way better than just push-to-talk. Voice
| activity detection, adjustable voice gate thresholds
| (open and close), echo cancellation, background noise
| removal, _individual person volume settings_ , adjustable
| application attenuation.
|
| From my perspective, Zoom's one and only benefit is how
| easy it is to share a link and get into a video chat.
| Everything else about it is painful to use.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Dude, Miro makes online meetings waaay better for brainstorming.
| Just divide people up into small groups then come together as a
| group. It works so well. Takes a bit of culture, but it is highly
| effective for us.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| So tired of this stuff and I think it's getting worse, the amount
| of mumbles and ummmms I have to sit through before people get to
| the point is absolutely insufferable.
|
| At times I'd rather just not work with remote people than have to
| deal with them anymore.
| t-3 wrote:
| I haven't done many video calls, but from watching a lot of
| presentations using the tech, it's the inappropriate inclusion of
| faces everywhere that is a problem. Humans naturally gravitate to
| faces and movement, which makes paying attention difficult when
| you always have a few moving faces onscreen. Screensharing good,
| video bad.
| carlmr wrote:
| But at the same time it's not enough face, you don't see the
| non-verbal cues of the presenter properly.
|
| I also find the bad audio quality and delays annoying enough
| that it becomes unpleasant enough to be downright irritating.
|
| Not a good setup for communication.
| throw82473751 wrote:
| Brainstorming meetings are usually a fail anyway, resulting in
| the lowest common denominator solution chosen, or the one of the
| loudest/strongest persons in the room. Much more superior is
| tasking the right person (or duo/trio) with thinking through it
| and proposing one solution or alternatives with trafeoffs.
|
| "Brainstorming meetings" so often for people who want to spread
| responsibility for bad decisions without admitting they have no
| clue even beyond the problem :(
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| The responsibility of whatever topic is on the team's (not on
| individuals). So if a decision must be made then the whole team
| should feel responsible for it.
| efsavage wrote:
| If you go into a brainstorming session with the expectation
| that you will choose anything, you're right, they are usually
| going to fail. If you go into them with the sole purpose of
| exploring a problem space and gathering a diversity of
| viewpoints, but not evaluating ideas, they can be amazingly
| valuable. My other two points of advice are to:
|
| 1) Keep them short (30-45 minutes). Do them just before lunch
| so people have a hard stop but also an opportunity to keep the
| discussion going in an even less structured way. 2) Keep them
| small (3-5 people). If you've got a dozen people you want to
| include, break it up, and then if you need/want, do some follow
| ups where you can group people differently and iterate on some
| earlier ideas.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| The same logic applies to literally any meeting for any
| purpose.
|
| A meeting should only ever be between two or three people. Any
| more and it's just a waste of time.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I feel the same way. There is even a culture of 'how to run
| successful brainstorming sessions' at my employer (sometimes
| called sprints). I have never once enjoyed that process, and I
| have never seen the result of those sessions be worthwhile or
| any better than just sitting down for 15 mins 1:1 with team
| members and talking through the problem. My feeling is that
| extroverts love them because it's a social gathering at work. I
| work in user experience.
| tootie wrote:
| Brainstorming asynchronously on a shared doc of some sort
| (google doc, miro board, even slides) is way better. Kick off
| with a meeting to set some parameters and answer questions,
| then let everyone enter ideas at their leisure for a week and
| regroup to dicuss.
| aeternum wrote:
| The most effective seems to be to do the first round
| independently, IE each person come with their 2-3 best ideas
| before collaboration. Otherwise there's a strong tendency to
| just +1 existing ideas rather than think independently.
| jesterpm wrote:
| I was going to say this exactly. We've started doing this
| recently and it's worked really well.
|
| We'll start off with a topic and give everyone, say, 15
| minutes to write ideas in the doc on their own. Then take the
| next 15 minutes to read digest what everyone else wrote, and
| then rest of the time to discuss as a group.
|
| It's great because it gives everyone a chance to think
| through the topic and share their perspective, but also you
| can quickly see the common themes.
| alunchbox wrote:
| Unsure about others experience but from an engineering
| perspective using tooling like exalidraw or miro we're able to
| brainstorm much more effectively than just a single whiteboard
| along with being able to have everyone contribute.
|
| What I find often is that there's TOO many people in a meeting
| that aren't needed for the brainstorming sessions and essentially
| don't contribute to the meeting.
| juancn wrote:
| Add an iPad with an Apple Pencil to the mix and you get a
| pretty good substitute for a whiteboard.
| rapnie wrote:
| And Mural. Would love to see good free software alternatives of
| these collaborative tools though.
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