Eye to eye
Is eye to eye contact in Microsoft Teams Room meetings a realistic - or even desirable - objective. What’s the situation now, in 2024?
This thought came up when attending a Fireside Chat session between Michel Bouman and Tom Arbuthnot last week. As usual, Michel had his usual quiet and commanding presence, but far from usual was his close-up camera position and unwavering gaze into the lens. To start with, it was impressive: it conveyed sincerity and focus, but after a while it felt strange - until Michel disclosed he was trialling a system that ‘deep faked’ his eye position in real time!
Early thought pieces from Microsoft on Teams meetings and Teams room designs showed the importance they placed direct eye to eye contact, as per the top photo below.
In the design and development work between Visual Displays and Epson, the combination of super-UST 3LCD laser projection with VDL Supernova TrueOptical ALR screen technologies, makes it possible to embed a micro camera into the screen without suffering glare from the projector.
But in practice I’m mostly seeing the adoption of small form factor cameras (Huddly, Poly etc) positioned up in free space in front of the screen. In a way this is a very low-tech approach, but post-pandemic as we are all now accustomed to hybrid working, the camera has come to represent an accepted analogue for our remote colleagues.
This is another ever-developing element to hybrid meeting and teaching space design. There are no cookie-cutter or off-the-shelf answers. MTR design in practice usually involves compromise and the Human-Centred Design processes we use to help clients to the right choice - for them - are a non-negotiable necessary step to have confidence in the final design and specification calls.
For more information on the VDL Digital Canvas displays using S-UST projection, click here.
Posted: 4th March 2024