Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

I can and do do a wide range of tasks while having an audio phone call with people. At home I can do basic housework, prepare meals, wander round for all sorts of things with the phone jammed between by head and my shoulder. It works well. I never have had video chat facilities for work (or needed them really) but I can think of any number of times gesticulating at colleagues for private communications while on an audio call, which is far from easy on video. Do you simply turn off the video briefly? If so, how do you explain this to the person you're communicating with?

Give me video chat and I'm tied to the screen. I can't easily do another job in parallel because it's on show and the other party can see that I'm not looking at them. They can see if I look around the screen to a TV, they can (indirectly) see if I open a second window on my computer to try a parallel task because the light to my face from the computer screen suddenly changes. This is quite visible most of the time.

For the times when video is a benefit it's a real benefit in my experience; being able to see the other person's expression, be shown objects or spaces in real time, generally use more communication methods. The bulk of the time though its benefits in my experience are small, and come at the expense of a significant extra burden on the communicators. Video, IMHO, will remain a niche in this area because the costs outweigh benefits to participants.

It's not "eye-to-eye" conversation. If you want the other person to feel like they are looking at you, you have to look dead into the camera. But then you miss out on seeing the other person.

I think that over the longue duree, a lot of technology shifts occur not because individuals gradually get convinced to move to the new technology, but because the folks clinging to the old ways eventually die out. (I'm paraphrasing Kuhn on paradigm change in science, of course.)

Our company is spread out over two states and three cities, so one would think that we're a prime candidate for video calling. There are subtleties that can be expressed by seeing each other that are simply not there when communicating through voice only. However, these subtleties are superfluous to most conversations.

Interestingly, I find video chat most useful in scenarios where it is least available.

One of the most challenging aspects of communication is interruption. Most people consider it rude to interrupt the speaker, but we do it all the time. It's part of our natural flow of conversation. It keeps us from wasting time, and helps refine the conversation.

With one-to-one communication, interruption is simple. You interject audibly, and the speaker will either pause, giving you the go ahead to take the floor, or will continue to finish their thought. This interplay sets the tone for the conversation. There's a subtle play for dominance in any conversation where there are opposing viewpoints.

With many-to-many communication, interruption is complex. Anyone who has ever been on a conference call knows that it is easiest to just keep your mouth shut and let everyone drone on for as long as they need to. In my experience, this is a major contributor to the unnecessary length of conference calls.

It's difficult to interject on a conference call, because too many people are trying to get a word in, and speakers continue too long on a string of points. By the time you can get the speaker's attention, the interjection irrelevant to the current topic.

Video calling among a group has the benefit of allowing participants to use body language to interrupt the speaker. A speaker, seeing a participant visibly uncomfortable, is more likely to pause and allow them to interject.

Unfortunately, group video chat over the most popular medium, Skype, is clumsy (requires Skype 5; can only be initiated from a computer, not mobile) and expensive (not free).

Video: everything from your voice, to your intelligence, to your looks will be perceived by others. Voice: looks are out. Text: none of the above (relatively; you can still make yourself look quiet stupid with bad grammar).

Psychological explanations dealing with egos (the self) are always 100% valid when dealing with humans. It's not about video quality here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGVSIkEi3mM

It's a factor. For people who don't have a one-click flawless iphone experience, clicking on the gchat icon when you don't know exactly what's going to happen is a sufficient barrier that it's not worth worrying about when you know exactly how regular chat will work and will do exactly what you want. Once people figure out how to make it work for them, or the technology gets more simple and reliable, it'll be used a lot though it will never fully replace voice chat or texting. There's already plenty of stories of people using video chat. My roommate uses his iPhone to cook dinner with his mother, who lives 6000 miles away.

Even on Star Trek, video chat wasn't ubiquitous. Communicators did not display video, as quite clearly there are times when it's convenient to hear someone's voice and have eyes free to focus elsewhere.

If I have a video chat window open, I feel sorta weird when I cover it up and go look something up or cover it with a notepad window to take notes, or a code editor to write some relevant code, etc. I feel like I'm rudely ignoring someone who's right there. And they have no cue this is happening, either, so they might assume it isn't and say something like, "so like this shows..." while briefly holding something up. And I can't see it just then because the window was covered. They had no way to know that I wasn't looking and missed it. Then there's awkwardness, repeating stuff, etc. It just feels slightly... wrong. IMO.

Edit: It'd be interesting if, while on a video chat, any windows or apps covering the remote participant "showed through" to them. I wonder if that alone would give enough sense of context to make it work a bit better?

This is not so with voice or text mediums.

With my girlfriend, parents and siblings I'm at ease and comfortable. In fact, I really enjoy it. With everybody else, though, I feel somewhere between indifferent, annoyed, and dreadful.

I'd definitely use it more if my immediate family had another computer with a webcam. That would be great for times when one of us is away for a few days. I expect we will acquire a second device with a webcam later this year, and then we'll see how it works out. :)

Thinking about it now, it seems like it would also be nice for the occasional call with old friends who live too far away to see very often. (We do use it that way occasionally with one of my wife's former roommates.) I'll have to keep that in mind.

On the other hand, there are definitely lots of phone calls I'd rather not have video on -- almost anything business-related, for instance.

So, no, I don't want to video chat unless we have a really good reason to. Something that involves showing me a video feed of X, where X can't be copy-pasted.

:)

"I hope the person doesn’t even answer so that I can leave a voice message with the pertinent information and get on with my day"

Why do folks think it is ok to embed important information behind multiple prompts and a dozen key jabs separated by seconds of dead time? Then, its like saying "Here you write this down, slave. I'm to busy to send a freaking text or email, I'll just dictate it to you."

I never listen to voice mail. I delete it unheard. I inform everyone that I do this. I'm not alone.

If so, what's it like? How well does it work?