What do Users Actually Look at During ‘Zoom’ Meetings? Discovery Research on Attention, Gender and Distraction Effects

Abstract

During the pandemic, mandatory shutdowns of schools and businesses forced people to communicate almost exclusively through computer-based video communications tools. The transition brought challenges, as users adjusted to the new environment, wading through various distractions, all the while learning the technology on the go. The existing research into Zoom meetings says little about what users actually observe during these meetings. This discovery-based study explores what users attend to in remote meetings by employing eye tracking technology. Study participants joined an interactive meeting and thenwatched a recorded Zoom video. We found that participants do pay attention to others in the meetings, and their gaze patterns differ between small and large groups. For small groups, they look away from the screen about one-third of the time. They look at their own video, but women look at themselves more than men. Participants notice distractions but spend little time looking at them.

Virtual meetings and wellbeing: insights from the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In addition, Fauville et al (2021) empirically examined videoconference fatigue and found a gender gap: women were found to be impacted more by the self-view effect. Further evidence was provided by an eye-tracking study that confirmed women looked more at themselves than men (George et al, 2022). In addition to the gender gap, Shockley et al (2021) found a more severe effect on fatigue of camera usage for employees with less tenure in the organization.…”

“…(2021) empirically examined videoconference fatigue and found a gender gap: women were found to be impacted more by the self-view effect. Further evidence was provided by an eye-tracking study that confirmed women looked more at themselves than men (George et al. , 2022).…”

“…Moreover, during lockdown, many employees spent the whole day in back-to-back meetings while WFH, enabled by the flexibility in scheduling virtual meetings, without time for recovering or having a (lunch) break (Reed and Allen, 2022). Also, while WFH there are competing resource demands related to household chores in the home environment and such resource competition is a source of stress (George et al, 2022;Karl et al, 2022). Moreover, there are many stories of family members and pets walking into virtual meetings during the pandemic (Hacker et al, 2020) and while acceptance of such events may have increased, they can still be considered interruptive for virtual meeting participants.…”

Virtual Fidgets: Opportunities and Design Principles for Bringing Fidgeting to Online Learning

“…There are elements of social presence and perception of a virtual fidget that could be investigated, such as an indicator when a student is using a virtual fidget to avoid misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions [26]. This would also reduce the virtual fidget user's stress of monitoring self-presentation [14]. Alternatively, instructors might see virtual fidgets as an opportunity to engage students in a new way, and future work could develop fidgets that are responsive and relevant to their specific lecture content.…”

I Cannot See Students Focusing on My Presentation; Are They Following Me? Continuous Monitoring of Student Engagement through "Stungage"

“…Understanding students' attention in the presence of multitasking is challenging, as a student might get involved with such activities for a significant duration during a live class [12]. Apart from that, gazing at the screen is not an essential condition for getting involved in an online meeting [19,20]. As shown in several recent studies, a student might still get actively involved in a virtual classroom even if they minimally gaze at the screen [9,16,18,42].…”