Video conferencing vendors - Get us out of trouble

In April of this year I published a blog claiming that we should reinvent the tooling for our digital agenda (https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-digital-agenda-cornerstone-of-your.html).

After working months from home now, I am starting to see a lot of gaps and issues as well in the different video conferencing tools (like Zoom, Slack, Teams, Skype, WebEx, Google Meet, Jitsi…​) I use now on a daily basis.
With these tools used so extensively worldwide and with so much competition on the market, it’s surprising that we are still facing so many issues with these tools. Clearly with home working and remote-first companies rising exponentially there is a strong need for improvements on those tools.

To improve these tools, it’s good to first identify the issues we are all facing during our video calls:

• "We can’t hear you" or "I can’t hear you": problems with microphones and loudspeakers are still too common. Good progress has already been made in some tools, e.g. by offering an easy test box (allowing to test your mic and speakers before you are entering a call), but nonetheless it’s far from perfect. Usually it’s the result of a wrong selection of the mic/loudspeaker in your settings or because your mic/speaker is disabled on your computer (e.g. via "Fn" + F1 / F3) or in your Windows settings. It seems this could be solved quite easily with a good "Auto-detection" feature, which can automatically enable your mic/speaker and try out different settings till it is ok. During auto-detection the user could click on a button as soon as he hears a sound (to indicate that the right loudspeaker is selected) and repeat saying "test…​test…​test" in his mic till the tool identifies a structured input signal (meaning the right mic is selected).

• "Sorry was on mute" or "We can’t hear you, you are on mute" : some tools already give a warning when you start speaking and you are on mute. This feature is really useful and should be taken over by all tools, but clearly this feature is still very immature at the moment, i.e.

  • The warning also appears when there is a background noise. With AI and Natural Language Processing becoming better and better, one would assume it shouldn’t be too complex to give only a warning when there is actually something being said in the mic (i.e. distinguish actual speaking from noise)

  • Instead of just showing a warning, it could be interesting to immediately enlarge the unmute button, allowing the user to click on it very easily and quickly

  • It should be even configurable (per call) that when the mic identifies a structured input signal, your mic gets automatically unmuted.

• "Can you please mute your microphone": calls disturbed by the noise and echoes from participants which didn’t mute their microphone are also a daily phenomenon. Also, for this issue all the technology is available to:

  • automatically mute a participant in case of ambient noise and audio feedback (i.e. audio of call coming back to the microphone)

  • automatically filter out noises and audio feedback

  • more easily mute everyone as a presenter. In some tools this is already possible, but not in all tools, and often it is not very straight forward to find this option. Via a configurable screen (in which you can easily add short-cuts and position buttons where you want) and via guided wizards this could be made much easier and more intuitive for the end-user.

• "Sorry, can you repeat, my connection was bad": while the quality of video calls has improved considerably thanks to better internet connectivity and higher network bandwidth and thanks to better servers managing the video conference calls, connection issues are still common and probably also unavoidable to remove completely. With the science that this is unavoidable, it would be better to implement automatic actions in case of connection issues, such as

• Automatically disabling the video (meaning just keeping sound) in case of network limitations (with priority of those experiencing the network issues and/or those who are not speaking/presenting)

• Get a warning when your connection is bad or if someone else’s connection in the meeting is bad (avoiding explaining something while certain participants can’t hear anything)

• Allow easily to disable the video of participants as a presenter

• "Sorry, I can’t connect": also this issue is all too common and even more annoying as important calls start with a delay, get postponed to another date or even get cancelled due to such connection issues. This can have serious impacts on productivity and even on sales figures.
  Some good suggestions to avoid these kinds of issues would be:

• When a video call is password protected, this can give issues when participants don’t have the password or type a wrong password. A Private Link or a more standard identification mechanism, like authentication via LinkedIn/Google/Facebook or via an even more strict authentication system like e.g. Itsme in Belgium, would make this much more user-friendly. A good identification mechanism furthermore ensures that there are no unwanted guests in a call.

• When you are in a call, immediately allow to copy (in a simple way) a Private Link to the clipboard of the ongoing call (allowing to easily send it via another tool to certain participants). Currently this is not very simple in several video conferencing tools.

• A more seamless integration of the different tools (like Skype, Teams, Slack, Zoom, WebEx…​) is also essential. Ideally everyone should be able to call in to a video conferencing call with its own most familiar tool, while still all joining the same meeting. This is crucial as many big firms have severe security restrictions (on their firewall), meaning that typically only 1 video conferencing call is authorized. When 2 large companies, with each such restrictions, but using a different tool, need to initiate a video call this can make a connection impossible. If everyone could join with its own video conferencing call tool, this would not pose this issue. Furthermore, everyone can use the tool he is most acquainted with, improving also the user experience.

• "I will share my screen. Can you see my screen? No?": all too often sharing your screen can be hassle as you are never sure what the other participants exactly see. Some improvements would also be useful here:

• When sharing your screen, it would be good to get some kind of feedback if users can indeed see your screen (e.g. by a small screen showing what the other participants in the call actually see)

• It should be more easily possible to open a pop-up in your video call session while sharing your screen, but avoiding that participants see the content of this pop-up. In this pop-up screen you should be able to see the call participants, take notes, send chat messages…​

• Possibility to indicate per call that only the screens of a specific application (e.g. PowerPoint) should be transmitted when sharing your screen. This would mean that if you would switch to another window, participants see automatically a "Wait screen" or a "Pre-defined screen" (like a company logo). This would avoid e.g. that inattentive presenters go to their mailbox, exposing confidential info, while still sharing their screen.

• "Sorry my wife/husband/child/cat/dog was passing by my screen": with homework becoming more common, this kind of situations become more and more frequent, which can sometimes lead to embarrassing situations. Many tools allow already to select a fixed background allowing to remove your background, but this is still very blurry and doesn’t work well when other moving objects are in the screen. Via AI learning during the call (and during previous calls), the system could learn to detect you better and your standard working place, which should allow to filter out the background much better.

Apart from resolving those issues, there are multiple value-added features that could really make a difference in usability and convenience, which ultimately could make a virtual meeting even better than a physical meeting:

• Privacy and security: with video calls being used more and more, there are a lot of issues raised on privacy and security. A number of concerns should be resolved here:

  • Providers need to give more guarantees that calls are not recorded and stored on their server (cfr. privacy concerns raised with Zoom)

  • There is always a risk with someone uninvited joining a call. It would be good therefore to foresee some kind of more sophisticated authentication (and identification) when logging into a video call.

  • A print screen can be easily made during a video call, which makes it difficult to share confidential info during a video call. Techniques should be found to avoid making a print screen, when the presenter prefers so.

  • Chat conversations linked to a video call should be automatically ended, when you are no longer in the call. E.g. in Teams you continue to get all chat messages exchanged between meeting participants, also long after you have already left the call.

  • ..

• Allow the organizer of a call to easily select the type of video call he wants. This selection will automatically preset a number of configurations. For example, following types could be foreseen:

  • One-way presentation / webinar, which defaults settings like automatically sharing screen by presenter, participants with disabled camera and automatically muted (need to request to unmute), chat function automatically open and with automatic recording of full content.

  • Workshop, which defaults settings like everyone unmuted, camera activated and with a shared board to write on automatically activated

  • Standard alignment meeting, with automatically the meeting agenda projected on the side, automatic transcription to notes and with participants unmuted, but with video disabled

  • Bilateral meeting, with settings like not possible to add persons, video enabled and unmuted and transcription and recording disabled

  • …​

• Improved tooling to allow digital white-board sessions, fully integrated in the video call tool

• Projecting all participants in a virtual meeting room (virtual space, such as an auditorium, meeting room or coffee bar), so they look like they’re in the same place together. This would position all participants around a table with a common background, instead of the traditional grid of boxes. With techniques like AR/VR this could be even more advanced (cfr. my blog on AR/VR : https://bankloch.blogspot.com/2020/02/can-augmented-reality-make-daily.html)

• Automatic transcription of virtual meetings, with automatic indexation of all conversations and possibility to do searches. This would allow a user to retrieve all meetings (i.e. the meeting meta-data like participants, date/time, duration…​) and their transcripts with a certain keyword in it, which occurred in a certain period and/or with a specific participant involved. This feature would not only allow to reduce or even eliminate the need to take notes during meetings, but also automatically creates a powerful knowledge base within the company. Of course, it should also be possible to easily export this meeting meta-data and meeting transcriptions to an existing knowledge management system.
  The next step in transcription is also intelligent processing, like automatic creation of To-Dos or planning a follow-up meeting automatically.

• Video call features organized via voice control. While for most applications voice control seems a bit artificial and difficult in a professional surrounding (talking to your computer), in a video call this is very natural, as you are already talking to your computer. Therefore, it would be more logical to control features like mute/unmute, enable/disable camera, share screens…​ via speech control.

• Solutions to convey body language, e.g. by allowing to select a mood icon. Potentially the computer could even identify your mood automatically and convey the emotion in the call, without video having to be enabled. Other ways to measure the body language is by tracking the eye movement, which allows to get feedback of the user’s focus.
  Of course these features cannot be enabled in all contexts, but for certain meetings/trainings, this could be helpful for all people involved.

• …​

With half of the Belgian workforce working from home and 7 in 10 employers in Belgium indicating they will actively stimulate home working also after the Covid-19 crisis has passed and this situation no different abroad, video conferencing will stay an integral part of our lives also after the Covid-crisis is longer passed. Given the enormous productivity loss, stress and frustration caused by the typical issues in a video conference, I would hope that one of the major tech firms will soon come up with a tool solving all those issues once and for all.