2021 Thesis: Zoom’s Immersive Environment

Description

Creating an informal online environment for spontaneous informal conversations

My thesis project, the Immersive Environment, is a new feature I piloted for Zoom that combines virtual backgrounds and ambient audio to create an immersive environment which enables participants to experience the same visual and audio stimuli, giving them the experience they are occupying the same space. Such environments are not designed to replace in-person meetings, but to give users an alternative experience that builds personal relationships and trust online. With this feature, Zoom users can make custom Immersive Environments using their own media or high-quality files they have downloaded from the Zoom Media Library.

Insight

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations have allowed their employees to work remotely from home. As a result, many companies now realize they can trust their employees to work remotely without being monitored.

In the future, companies will introduce hybrid or fully remote work positions in certain work sectors. The search for talent will not be restricted by the individual’s proximity to the office. Companies could hire anyone from within the country. This means that coworkers my rarely, if ever, meet each other in-person.

My design goal was to help remote workers connect and build trust and relationships that will lead to strong collaboration.

Idea

The Immersive Environment feature combines ambient audio and visuals to help participants feel that they are actually occupying the same space. Participants are able to mix and match their own audio and images. Their custom environment can then be synced with participants on the call, creating a shared experience of this virtual space and increasing participant’s feeling of being together.

This design strives to support social interactions on video calls for coworkers and other individuals who are separated and unable to meet-in-person.

Impact

Many people have multiple video calls a day and feel physically and mentally drained by them. Immersive Environments help diminish “Zoom fatigue” that people experience by providing them with fun informal spaces and inspirational online content. This design provides people with inspirational online engagement as they can create and share their custom Immersive Environments with each other. Finally, these environments also help reduce the awkwardness of Zoom video calls by providing ambient audio that alleviates the burden of filling silences among participants.

Video pitch

Process

Research

My first step was to identify three areas of opportunity in the work sphere that I could design a solution within.

Key Workplace Insights

• Forced to work at home: the pandemic has forced companies to work online;

• Online environment more difficult to facilitate trust: employers who relied on in-person monitoring to make sure employees are working have not lost their main management tool and have had to look for technological solutions, like spyware, that are detrimental to building trust;

• Factors that make it more difficult to build trust online: a lot of non-verbal communication is lost in translation, meeting online adds a formal expectation to “in-office” communications, and it is harder to initiate informal communication to get to know coworkers better.

interviews

I created an interview script with a variety of open-ended questions aimed at understanding the human and personal experience of the online work environment. I went through two iterations of these questions before they were ready to be used. This enabled me to not only collect data from a wide variety of responses, but would also help me to establish informal conversations with the interviewees with the goal to make them as comfortable as possible. This made it easier for me to quickly establish trust with the interviewees.

I then reached out to people from various professions and experiences in both the in-person and remote workplaces. I was thus able to collect data that was well rounded, not bias, and derived from multiple experiences and perspectives. I was able to conduct six interviews.

Based on the interviews and desk research, I identified two personas: the Digital Nomad and the Professional Newbie

Key Employee Desires

• Need for external indicators of trustworthiness: Having reliable information on people’s abilities makes it easier for employers to take a leap of faith when hiring someone they have never met (e.g. portfolios, recommendations, previous work experience, etc.);

• The need for privacy of personal data: people are concerned about separating personal and work data as the leaking of personal data in the workplace could result in a variety of consequences, like damaging a persons reputation in the office.

• Feel supported in the work environment: employees desire a space where they feel valued and can engage in honest dialogue, facilitate better collaboration, and built trust within teams;

• Inspirational online engagement: people desire stimulation and inspiration. A lack of stimulation can result in not only in burned out workers, but also a variety of mental health problems.

Ideation

Storyboard

Prototyping

Final Product

Video Demonstrator Showing How Immersive Environments Are Created and Used

Features In Detail

The Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise Zoom subscriptions will give varying access to downloadable files in the Zoom Virtual Background and Ambient Sound library. The goal of this feature is to give users highquality visual and audio files to help create their own original engaging and inspirational vitual environments online.

In the “Ambient Audio” tab, users can upload audio files from the Zoom Ambient Sound library or computer. There is also an option to create custom mixes in this tab that can be saved and used to make a new Immersive Environment.

Experience It Yourself

Since this design relies on the emotional and sensory experience of this tool to measure its effectiveness, it is really difficult to explain to peole how this tool works and convince them that it works.

So it is best to simulate this tool and try it out for yourself. If you would like to experience this new feature during your own Zoom call, bellow are instruction on how to set up the simulation.

Thank Yous

I want to acknowledge the wonderful support of my thesis advisors, Job Rutgers and Reza Mortezaei, as well as family and friends who participated in user testing and gave feedback.

Disclaimer

This project is in no way officially associated with Zoom. It was based on Zoom’s customer base, features, and existing technology to create a well rounded OCAD fourth year Industrial Design thesis project.