When you are on a videocall do you also keep looking at your own thumbnail video?
When I speak, unless I’m sharing the screen I always keep looking at myself. It’s kind of strange – it clearly does not match a real-world conversation, but somehow I can’t help it.
Edit: More context – I’m wondering if others have it, if this is something that can be explained by some “brain” thing, and also how does it affect the conversation.
We use zoom for work and I enable my video feed as a full panel like every other participant, only time it feels weird or gets annoying is when there’s only 1 other person on the call and our feeds sit side by side. I don’t like how I look and have anxiety, so I guess I use it to make sure that I don’t look weird or something.
I might be odd here. I don’t look at myself, and if I could hide my video feed from myself, I would. I think I look strange, so I find it distracting. I also avoid watching myself on video in general.
Yep. Everybody does. Watch where their eyes are pointing, you can tell. I hide the window on apps that let me (or un-maximize the window and slide it off the screen a bit if I’m on one side).
From where their eyes are pointing I can only tell whether or not they’re looking at the camera, but if they are looking elsewhere, I have no way of knowing if that other place is my face or theirs or anything else (even outside scope of the talk – it could be a bug crawling on their desk for all I know).
If they’re consistently looking down and to the right (for most apps) and not scanning/reading, they’re probably looking at their own video. I’ve certainly noticed it.
I combat this habit by placing a window over the top of whatever app I’m using for the video call so my eyes stay on the camera. That strategy is foiled the moment screen sharing becomes required, but more often than not I know exactly what they’re talking about. As I’ve never been on the receiving end of this strategy who knows if it makes me look better or like a weirdo…
who knows if it makes me look better or like a weirdo…
both. I’ve recently realized that during our 1on1 calls my boss is “looking at me”, which always made me feel more listened, overall better.
I mentioned that on a different, informal call, like, “are you using some tricks…” and he told us he’s doing no tricks, it’s just that the camera happens to be close enough to the screen where he places the call window, and that’s a laptop which is far enough that the angular difference is negligent. So that made him look better.
(And I think it’s even better than looking at the camera; he was kinda looking at both, me & the camera.)
But I suspect that this can bite back quickly if you’re in a meeting with several people and say, for a minute you (say, Alex) are exchanging ideas with one person, say, Bob while others (Cathy, Dan) are listening. The weird part is that in Bob, Cathy and Dan’s visual experience you’re directly looking at them, which will seem natural to Bob, but strange to to Cathy and Dan since they know you’re talking to Bob right now so why the heck you keep peeking at them for so long, as if you want them to jump in to the convo or something…
If the situation was similar as I’ve described for my boss (smaller screen, further away), then it can even be affected by the way Cathy and Dan’s videos are arranged on your screen. Not all are going to be closest to the camera, only the closest one to the camera could feel an eye contact, but that’s not going to change according to who you are talking to. (There could be some technology or call UI design to help with that…)
Overall, I think with some video-calling experience people will generally adapt for the situation over time, but it may differ individually…
I swear people in on Zoom to testify and for some reason I took to looking at the camera because it perhaps makes it more official, since I assume they’re looking at me. I dunno. Life is one big joke.
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