A place for meaningful video conversAItions in a world of video conferences
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Stay curious, cheers!
OVERVIEW
1:1 Video conversations are the most common and intimate way people use video conferencing. They are the best way to build meaningful connections in an online world.
Ben Horowitz (Founder of a16z) describes 1:1 meetings as “free-form meeting for all the pressing issues, brilliant ideas, and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email and other less personal and intimate mechanisms.”
Today, the products used for 1:1 video conversations are video 'conferencing' solutions. The linguistics forms and cognitive loads of conversation and conference are vastly different. 'Conferencing' solutions work in the functional sense but lack in the user experience aspects.
Fun Fact: Majority of the current features are either core technology enhancements (video/audio quality) or focused towards group meetings (transcripts, quick reactions, raise hand etc.)
Additionally, with the growing usage of video calls, it is becoming increasingly important for the length of these calls to be optimized for engagement, efficiency and productivity.
Lets Humanize video conversations in a world of video 'conferences'!
RESEARCH PAPERS AND DATA
I read through research papers and articles on communication, psychology of video calls, networking and one on one conversations. (The links to the research papers and articles have been provided at the end of the case study)
Lets take a moment to define some key terms and concepts.
RESEARCH
Key Terms:
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Video Conversation
Moving forward I will be 'Video Conversation' as an umbrella term which encompasses both one on one conversations as well as a small group conversation(up to 4 people).
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Non Verbal Communication
A wide variety of activities, some of which may not even be regarded as behaviors by everybody, are included in nonverbal communication. Physical attractiveness, facial morphology, as well as behavioral choices like hair style, clothing, and adornment or more generally appearance along with those like facial, vocal, and postural expressions, touch, proxemics, and gaze make up non verbal communication. Even physical objects that act as a society's means of communication have been included under this area by some researchers.
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Zoom Fatigue
A feeling of exhaustion that often occurs after attending a series of virtual video meetings.
Key Concept #1 | What makes a good video conversation?
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Right state of mind from the people engaging in the conversation.
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A definite purpose and direction to the conversation.
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Clear audio and video quality with good visibility of facial expressions
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Mindfulness towards time constrains of members engaged in the conversation.
Key Concept #2 | The pulse of people using video conferencing solutions
Two key insights stand out from a report by dialpad.com which analyzed data over 12 million minutes and almost 400,000 meetings from 1/1/2019 to 6/30/2021 and an additional survey of 2,821 US based employees across various industries, business sizes, departments about their experience and thoughts on video conferencing.
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The average meeting length of meetings for a meeting size of 2-4 people is around 30 minutes.
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Over 50% of the members surveyed mention Difficulty to read the read the room and meetings being unorganized account as their biggest pain point.
USER PERSONAS
Alright! now that we have an academic and data-based understanding of video conversations,
let's meet three potential users and take a moment to soak in their personas and understand their user journey flow.
USER FLOW EXPERIMENT
The nature of the problem we are trying to solve permits experimentation to gain first-hand experience of the user flow. Hence, though experimentation would take a much longer time than a user flow diagram it stands out as a more accurate way to understand user flow.
I designed an experiment to mimic the scenarios Kristin, Kelly and Tom would face in their user journeys. To structure the experiment, I broke it down into four key parameters and sub-variables for each parameter.
ACTIVITY BEFORE THE CALL
Switched from work/call without a break
Took a 2-3 min break prior to the conversation
LOCATION OF MEETING
Workstation
Break area/café
DEVICE
Laptop
Mobile
CONVERSATION FLOW GUIDE
No preparation
Screenshare a mini slide show
Notebook
Flash Cards
By adjusting these variables I collected data from 120 video conversational calls over a span of 3 months.
The combination which best worked for me was a break prior to the call and had the conversation on my phone with flashcards as flow guide. The location from which I had the video conversation did not have much of an impact.
OBSERVATIONS
By reading between the anecdotal results of the user flow experiment from the viewpoint we have due to the research papers and data.
We can observe the following:
1. The state of mind of the user right before they hop onto the conversation matters.
Zoom fatigue kills conversations.
2. The device and location play the role of nonverbal communication agents, a mobile phone or a non-work location signals our brain a relaxed personal conversation rather than a formal work setting conference (Which a laptop or workstation might).
3. Conversation flow guides which did not require a lot of reading comprehension work better. Additionally, it is a bonus if users don't have to take their eyes off the screen completely to read them.
1. Set direction to the conversation.
2. Maximize the ability to convey non verbal communication.
3. Make users mindful of each others time.
4. Alter state of mind of user before they start a conversAItion.
PRODUCT
GOALS
THE PRODUCT
I usually perform an exercise to help me get a direction while designing products, I convert the Goals into core functions and list down features of each of those core functions.
The end result is a birds eye view design specification document.
KEY WIREFRAMES
Home screen
conversAItion invite screen
Video conversAItion screen
USER FLOW
Streamlined user flow process that focuses on send conversAItion process
DESIGN LANGUAGE
The design language of the product must project rich conversations with tones of friendliness and curiosity.
Purple is a beautiful mixture of red and blue, and sits exactly halfway between the two on the colour wheel, though varying each amount can result in new shades.
The blue tones bring in a sense of relaxation and stability, which alongside the energy of red synthesizes to create a feeling of wisdom and good sense.
Lighter shades of purple convey relaxation and dreamlike feelings of nostalgia, while the darker shades convey richness, mystery and curiosity.
HIGH-FIDELITY SCREENS
After hours-long discussions with my internal devil's advocate and my peers with whom I will launch the project based on the response.
A decision was made to limit conversAItions to mobile devices only.
The reason is, mobile phones are personal to people. Your reaction to a call on your laptop is completely different than a call on your mobile phone. This allows us to send a subconscious message to the user that reinforces that they are here to have a meaningful heartfelt video conversAItion rather than a video conference.
HOME SCREEN
View with accessible join card for conversAItions starting in less than 10 min
View without any meetings in the next 10 min
View of upcoming meetings,
accessed by dragging the upcoming conversAItions tab upwards
conversAItion LOADING SCREEN
With a growing and decaying gradient spanning over 10 seconds to replicate the pattern of deep breathing to change users' state of mind.
Every user will go through a 'Designed Delay' animation cycle before they join the conversation. This provides people with a chance to compose themselves and know when they would join the call rather than being at the mercy of the host.
Designed Delay© Neozeno 2023 XD
Video conversAItion Screens.
The current mobile conferencing solutions force the users to choose between the shared prompt or the video feed of the person they are trying to have a conversation with.
The minimized video feed heavily restricts nonverbal communication, while the minimized prompt is not readable.
conversAItions lets users view the prompts and the video feed of each other simultaneously, complementing each other rather than fighting for screen space and taking precedence.
The prompts on the main screen are located towards the topmost part of the screen to reduce eye shift.
The list of all prompts can be accessed by long-pressing any prompt.
There is a limit of four prompts per conversAItion to encourage users to use them wisely.
Quality over quantity.
Create conversAItion
DETAIL SCREEN
The title and description entered will be fed to a generative AI to create relevant prompts for the conversAItion.
The details screen of send conversAItion flow has only 4 duration options.
This is done so that the sender is mindful of the receivers time.
The time intervals were decided based on the research and data discussed previously.
EDIT
conversAItion SCREENS
These screens utilize gestures and micro interactions to replace what would have been an overload of buttons.
No select prompt button,
Tap to select the prompt.
No Edit button.
Long press a prompt to enter the edit mode.
No reorder prompt arrows.
Just drag and drop them.
Early 2010 had two great shakes. IPod's shake to shuffle and the Harlem shake.
Inspired by the great shakes.
I now present you shake to regenerate prompts.
Shake the phone on the card screen to regenerate all unselected prompts.
Or shake during the edit prompt process to quickly generate another prompt.
Generated
Prompts
( (Shake) )
Re-generated
Prompts
IMPACT
Through conversAItions we hope to create space for video conversations in a world of video conferences.
To get people to engage in meaningful conversations that add value.
To promote mindfulness while engaging in a conversation.
To remind people that video conversations are more than just another video conference and that they can sometimes be magical.
WHATS NEXT?
Explore micro-interactions and gesture-based commands.
I thoroughly enjoyed using micro-interactions and gestures to enable users.
They help declutter pages which would otherwise be filled with icons.
Experiment with delay as a means to add value to users.
p.s. I am calling dibs on the term designed delays, you heard it first on neozeno
It is good that the technology we have today has almost no lag and everything loads super fast,
but maybe we could use delays to add value to users. Use delays to build up emotions to a key moment, similar to how conversAItion has a loading screen to alter the users' state of mind.
We could use delays to help user process information and avoid burnout.
Video games use delays beautifully, they use loading screens to showcase tool tips and explain in-game mechanisms. Even the music industry uses designed delays, think beat drop.
Maybe it's time we ported Designed Delays into digital product design.
'Designed Delays' would be a refreshing change of pace in a world that bombards people with stimulation. Will understand and explore 'Designed Delays'.
Build and launch the MVP?
I and a group of close friends keep trying to build products. I am the product design and marketing guy of the group.
We wanted to try a different approach this time around, build awareness and create a waitlist for early access and gain validation. You can help us launch by filling out the support project ConversAItion form ↗
Thank you for sticking till the end.