Meetings that only use voice communication, such as a teleconference, present difficulties in determining who is speaking and listening. These problems increase as the number of meeting participants increases, an additional factor being how familiar people are with the voices of the other participants. Non-verbal cues, like body language and facial expression, which help us in a face-to-face meeting, are missing in a teleconference, so that it can be difficult even to determine when it's a good time to speak.

Photo credit: Jesper Noer

Simple web conferencing tools that incorporate voice communication usually include indicators to show who is talking and who is waiting to talk, so that some semblance of normal conversation can be maintained.

Instant messaging (IM) tools and email have employed emoticons to try to convey some form of non-verbal communication, but voice communication requires a different solution.

That is why many companies look to live video feeds to provide the non-verbal accompaniment to voice communication in web conferences. Unfortunately broadband-quality Internet connections are required to accommodate these feeds adequately. Even then, the average broadband connection is not fast enough to provide a smooth, low-latency video feed and the resulting service, though better than a static image, is often out of sync with the voice.

Companies like smartVR and Tixeo have tackled the issue in a different way; by utilising videogame-like immersive technologies to create three-dimensional meeting spaces in virtual reality. In these spaces participants have avatars (computerised representations of themselves) that can deliver an experience reminiscent of a face-to-face meeting and these environments are also usable for people with dial-up internet connections as slow as 28.8 kbps.

In these environments, it is possible to create an avatar that has some similarity to our own physical appearance. We can "walk around" in the 3D-space much like a character in a video game and interact with objects and other avatars. We can even get an auditory sense of where people are in relation to us thanks to advanced spatial sound capabilities provided by tools like SmartMeeting.
As suggested by the article "Video games come to the boardroom" by Gillian Kerr of RealWorld Systems, there are three main elements that pose a challenge in online meetings:

Facial expression - As human beings we instinctively read facial expressions to elicit information about situations. Obviously, a good quality video feed will allow us to see facial expression, but the video game style avatar can be endowed with a set of facial expressions and movements that also help in this respect.

Photo credit: Steven Wise

Interruptibility or Real-time open channels - This idea involves concepts like presence-awareness where meeting participants can see whether someone is available online or not. In an office you might put your head round the corner and interrupt someone to ask a quick question or bump into someone at the coffee machine and have a quick chat. These are things that IM interfaces can go some way towards providing.

Ease of use - A critically important consideration in online meetings. Technology has to be intuitive and as easy to use as possible for the participants.

Live video feeds and the use of avatars are two approaches that facilitate the traditional lack of non-verbal clues in online meetings. It may be that these are the roads that will set the standards for visually richer communications in the coming years or it may be that such approaches are exploratory innovations that will not set roots in our virtual meetings.

What do you think?