Why Zoom Is Terrible

Now to a related topic: why are Zoom calls draining? Or better yet, why aren’t Zoom calls more entertaining? Forget the eye contact. I think it’s because people just don’t look as good. You’re looking humans from a very unnatural angle. They’re badly lit. It’s not a fun movie. Your mind is comparing it to reality and it’s far less engaging.

That’s the question Zoom and all its competitors haven’t really asked. Zoom has done a good job of asking why it was hard to get into a call, but hasn’t really asked why you’re in the call in the first place. Why, exactly, are you sending someone a video stream and watching another one? Why am I looking at a grid of little thumbnails of faces? Is t... See more

As the natural experiment of the pandemic demonstrated, physical interaction is important. Text is a highly attenuated medium — it’s slow and cumbersome, and an ocean of nuance and tone and emotion is lost. Even video chat is a highly incomplete substitute for physical interaction. A phone doesn’t allow you to experience the nearby physical presen

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Videoconferencing could be great. If only we could get the thing to work properly. But for now, it’s quite often just painful.

It turns out that today’s video conferencing technology doesn’t emulate how people interact with others in person.

The impact of bad design is massive – multiplied across the billions of people striving to flourish online, not only when we need the technology as a stop-gap measure to alleviate disruptions to everyday life, but also when we want to use it for more socially progressive purposes. Videoconferencing, and the telepresence experience it can enable, pr... See more

Mark: phones, TVs, etc try to deliver experiences that feel high fidelity but at no point you feel like you are in it....  You can't have side conversations on Zoom.