Making online meetings more engaging

This project was carried out in collaboration with Konftel. It focuses on communication in distributed work settings. It looks 5-10 years in the future and addresses challenges and opportunities relating to computer-mediated collaboration.

Starting point

*Aha is a concept of a smart speaker and an interface that supports the display of engagement in online meetings while respecting users' privacy.

Design proposal

5 weeks project
Umeå Institute of Design
Collaboration with Konftel

Team

Context

Barbara Schussmann
Dongheng Wu

Contribution to the project

Research, workshop facilitation, conceptualization,
user testing, video editing

How might we leverage engagement in online meetings to improve the distributed work experience?

Project timeline

The project took place over the course of 5 weeks. It started with a week of research where we conducted 10 interviews. We then further explored our topic by engaging in bodystorming activities and conducting a workshop which helped us in our ideation process. Afterwards we laid out 3 early concepts. We later discussed them during our mid-presentation and decided our main direction. We then took our final concept through several rounds of iterations where we further refined it and conducted user tests. And finally we created a video in order to better communicate the experience of the product.

Stories from the people interviewed

Interviewing individuals from various professional background and location allowed us to better understand different people’s behavior and habits during remote meetings. Writing short stories about users’ experience helped us throughout the process. For example, when coming up with an idea, we would ask ourselves questions such as: “How would Jana feel if she had this product?” or “How would our solution help Fabian with his daily problems?” etc.

“I often fake technical issues.”

Fabian is a strategy planner working for a Swiss company. He moved to Istanbul a few months ago in order to be able to live with his girlfriend who is studying there. Their old flat was located in the center of the city just next to a mosque. Every time there was a call for prayer Fabian had to mute his microphone so that it would not disturb the video call. Because he didn't want to go into details about his personal life with some of his colleagues, Fabian often had to fake technical problems in order to be able to mute his microphone.
"When I am presenting, I often wonder if people are listening."

Jessie is a product manager based in Shangai. She works for the Chinese division of a French company, and due to Covid-19, she has a lot of online meetings during the day. When she has to present something, she doesn’t get much feedback. She often wonders if the people she is talking to are paying attention to what she is saying…
"When I don't feel good and my skin is very bad, I just don't turn the camera on."

Jana is a German UX designer who attends many meetings during the day. Normally, she has her video on, and checks beforehands how she looks with the app "Photobooth" on her Macbook. Sometimes Jana doesn’t feel comfortable appearing on screen because her skin can be "bad" as she would phrase it. In these situations she prefers to have her camera off during meetings.
“I don’t pay attention if I am gesturing or not because you know, nobody is seeing me!”

Sevinc is a medical doctor and researcher living in New York. In the morning she gives consultations to patients on the phone. During that time Sevinc often moves around. She says that she tends to make expressive gestures when she gets irritated. In fact, she sometimes has to repeat the same information over and over to a few of her patients and that can make her frustrated. She says that allowing herself to physically vent helps her stay calm and professional on the phone.

Main factors influencing engagement in online meetings

Our research helped us better pinpoint the factors influencing engagement in online meetings. By doing so, it enabled us to approach the topic of distributed work as presenting numerous opportunities rather than only problems to solve. We found out that people's opinion about working from home can differ a lot, but that the situation isn’t as black or white as it is often portrayed. In fact, most people find value in working remotely, and some are already setting up creative new collaboration practices.

Values behind *aha

Enhancing behaviors

It was important for us to create a concept that would enhance people’s existing collaboration practices rather than force them to completely change the way they communicate. This is why we focused on making back-channeling more visible.

Collective approach

We decided to focus on showing collective rather than individual engagement. By doing so, we envisioned that it could help creating a positive group feeling and give introverted people an opportunity to show engagement without being put on the spot.

Respect of people’s privacy

From our research we found out that privacy is one of people’s main concern, and that a lot of people felt that their private space was invaded when they had to have their video on. That’s why we decided to create a solution that protects people’s privacy while allowing them to be present and professional.

Customization

By using AI to recognize the meaning of people’s subtle sound reactions, our design solution would be able to accurately translate them into visuals. Moreover it would allow for different cultural expressions of the same type of reaction.

An interface/product combination

We decided to go for an interface/product combination that would complement Konftel’s existing portfolio. In fact, when trying their existing product, we found out that they worked well for remote conferences but that they weren’t well-suited for home office situations mostly due to their large size and corporate aesthetic.

Introducing a reactive mode

The smart sound filtering of *aha allows for a reactive mode that completely mutes background noise and other people’s voice. Additionally it translates voice reactions into engaging visuals.

Interaction with the device

The people we interviewed during our user tests told us that they prefer discrete products that are easy to interact with. That’s why we decided on a small bluetooth-connected device.

By tapping on the device, the user can completely mute themselves. Double-tapping on it brings them back to reactive mode.

The volume can easily be adjusted by rotating the device

Making back-channelling information visible

We decided to translate back-chanelling sounds (small sounds such as “hmmmm” “aha!” “ooohh” “eeehh??”) into abstract visuals that change depending on the intensity and type of reactions happening during the meeting. This visual translation would allow people to freely express their reactions and show their engagement in the conversation without being put on the spot or interrupting the people speaking. The colors show the nature of the reaction and the height of the waves shows how many people are reacting. As an additional feature, confettis appear if more than one person starts clapping.

Interface view modes

We decided to give the user the possibility to change the way they see the engagement flow depending on the type of meeting they are having.

Process

Here are a few images of the process behind our concept.

We started by interviewing 10 people about their life and work practices. Since the interviews had to be carried out remotely we had the chance to talk to people living in Sweden, Germany, China, Mexico, Japan, the US and Turkey.

The interviews were made over zoom and we used an extra webcam to show the people we interviewed our notes and also shared drawings with them.

interview notes about someone's typical day

reflecting and making sense of interview insights

Personal takeaways

I really enjoyed working on this project because we had the opportunity to explore different research and ideation methods.
Another learning for me was to collaborate with people from different backgrounds. In fact, our team was diverse in terms of nationality and previous studies, and this project pushed us to find common ways to discuss about design and to collaborate together.