Understanding human vision is 100% essential in the design of Microsoft Teams Rooms…
…both the displays and the room itself. And here’s why.
For humans to survive, we evolved eyesight and perceptions to see predators and danger before we got killed or eaten. Try this quickly: keep your eyes fixed on an object straight ahead. Now raise your hands to each side of your face and move them back to the farthest point that you can see them. Yes! We have peripheral vision of over 180 degrees in many cases.
But everything we do see and look at is via reflected light. We don’t look into the office ceiling lights. We use them to see each other and our work objects via reflected light.
It’s not natural to look directly into an emissive light source, is it? So it’s rather strange that we do this in the form of flat panel displays and dvLED. (But this is also the reason why they are absolutely perfect for digital signage.)
Projection is the natural way to look at content and remote participants, because it’s reflected light - the same way you see when you look away from the screen and look at your colleague or notebook.
Projection or other reflected display technologies such as ‘liquid ink’ are the most suitable for extended viewing - which is a key design criterion for hybrid meeting and teaching space design.
There’s even a standard for this! It’s called Task Luminance Ratio. It exists to prevent asthenopia (‘eye strain’) by limiting the difference in brightness to all the key objects (‘tasks’) to a 3:1 luminance (‘brightness’) ratio. This is not rocket science, but when I take my meters to audit a space, it’s depressing how many rooms effectively have sources of eye strain built in by means of too bright emissive (e.g. flat panel and dvLED) displays.
Do you have eye strain built into your room systems? The joke is that not only is it likely that you do, you are also wasting thousands of pounds/Euros/dollars in electricity driving them!
Yes projection is the best display for meeting and teaching spaces. But it must be Projection Done Properly. This is more expensive than those white screens, but still cheaper per m2 than all other options.
Projection Done Properly = ALR 3LCD laser projection, the combination of true optical ALR (ambient light rejecting) screen material that is black until the light from a 3 chip laser projector (to ensure perfect colour rendition) hits it.
Posted: 8th May 2024