Foundational Principles for Video Collaboration
In my twenties, I worked in the construction industry. I was a lab and field technician focusing on the installation of soil and foundations. My job was to verify whether or not the contractor installed concrete projects and the soil beneath them correctly. I did this via lab and field tests as well as by visually inspecting the project. Much of my job was inspecting foundational construction for buildings. If the ground, backfill, and foundation are installed incorrectly, the entire building is at risk.
The same idea is true about video conferencing solutions. Customers will follow many principles when designing a collaboration solution, but there are a few foundation concepts that, if followed, will ensure success:
Foundational Principles for Video Collaboration
A collaboration solution must be:
1. consistent
2. simple to use, deploy, and manage
3. have high-quality audio
4. have high-quality video
5. be secure
A collaboration solution must be consistent
I used to work in a shared space where multiple vendors housed their inside sales teams.
Because several video and audio vendors had teams, there was access to many different technologies. This situation is a technology enthusiast’s dream, for themselves, but an end user’s nightmare. Imagine going into one conference room and using one technology for collaboration, and the next day booking a different room with technology that worked and acted completely differently.
Some conference rooms housed multiple technologies at the same time. One would need to decide whether to use the classic Polycom Group system, Cisco SX 20, or the in-room PC with one of several different camera options. I enjoyed working with disparate technologies, but to the average user, a room like that is overwhelming.
Consistency and simplicity are the keys. These two principles drive much of the room design in our industry. A well-designed solution will be consistent and simple to use for any level of expertise.
In our world, there is an ever-growing number of new collaboration platforms and customers face a constant dilemma. They must decide which platform provides their end-users the best experience while allowing the most flexibility.
Unfortunately, there is not an easy answer to this problem. Most ecosystems (Zoom, Teams, WebEx, etc.) have some level of trade-off, consistency, and simplicity versus flexibility. In my opinion, consistency and simplicity stand out; this is why so many companies standardize on one platform.
But it isn’t only at the platform level, but all the way down to the user interface level. The best-designed solutions maintain a consistent experience that is simple to use. Something as simple as sharing content is handled differently on one platform than another. Engineers can argue about which method for sharing your computer screen is superior. Still, if an end-user can walk into any collaboration space and, without any trouble, share their screen, that solution is a success.
“Engineers love features; everyone else loves benefits.” — Andy Callan
A collaboration solution must be simple to use, deploy, and manage
Consistency and simplicity are symbiotic principles. They apply to the collaboration solution at all levels, from concept and design to deployment and management; a collaboration solution must be easy and dependable.
Having the same interface and experience in every room is an important part of a collaboration ecosystem, but being able to deploy, manage and maintain the users, rooms on the network is also critical. Video collaboration is now universal and business-critical. It is up to the IT department to keep everything up and running. Without visibility and some level of control at every level, IT is powerless to provide the needed support.
The global pandemic only threw gas on a fire. Because of that, video collaboration has exploded into every aspect of our lives. With the explosion that followed, new problems arose. Management tools that focus mostly on desktop phones, video devices, and personal headsets are now being tasked with including visibility into webcams and other USB-based peripherals.
The next generation of management tools will include devices across workspaces, offices, home environments, and the go. A catchphrase has become popular, “Work is no longer where we go; it is what we do.” Management tools must rise to the challenge of providing visibility and control for IT departments to keep us working wherever we are.
A collaboration must have high-quality audio
Back in the ’80s, when MTV still played music videos, I would watch on our television. TV’s back then were more like a piece of furniture than technology. The ancient screen was problematic, and often strange artifacts would interfere with the picture. I would sometimes wonder if our television was possessed by a demon trying to communicate with our dimension. Though the picture would sometimes fail, the sound was always acceptable. And my siblings and I would often let MTV play because regardless of the picture, the music was the reason we tuned in.
Fast-forward a few years when my parents had a little more money, and they invested in a new television. My brothers and I pushed the limits of the new TV and eventually blew out both of the speakers. My father was furious, but more importantly to me, I couldn’t watch MTV. Even though the video came through crystal clear, the audio sounded like an early model telephone, demonstrating how important having good audio was to the overall viewing experience.
The same is true about modern-day video collaboration. A high-resolution picture adds a lot to the experience of meeting over distance, but no matter how good the video is, if the audio fails, so does the call.
Many USB cameras have been designed with several different room sizes in mind, so they are equipped with omnidirectional microphones. However, for a personal device, a directional microphone is better. In that case, the microphone should be tuned to focus on an individual instead of picking up every noise in the environment.
The audio must be of high quality and designed for the application. For instance, it is wonderful to have microphones tuned to pick up everyone in a room designed for large groups. But when you design rooms or devices for smaller groups, you must scale the pickup range to match.
A collaboration solution must have high-quality video
Don’t let my discussion about the importance of audio downplay the need for quality video. Audio may be more important, but a video is like the grease to the gears. Audio may be what makes the call possible, but video removes the friction of distance. Some people I work with I have never met people in real life. However, because of my work as a video conferencing engineer, I feel as if I truly know them. Because video adds the human touch to an otherwise impersonal meeting.
2020 highlighted this. When no one could visit each other during the global pandemic, video calls became the lifeline to relationships, including our business relationships.
Yes, indeed, a meeting could still proceed if you lose video but retain audio. But many of us remember when audio calls were the norm, and video was rare; If asked, few of us would return to those days. We have all been part of a call that, for one reason or another, the video failed, and we continued the meeting with only audio. In my opinion, there is a noticeable loss to the interactions. We lose a level of personality when we cannot look someone in the eyes or see them smirk, cringe, laugh, scowl, or look at us quizzically.
“Body language, facial expressions and vocal characteristics are not easy to control, whereas verbal communication is done intentionally and is easier to manipulate. As a result, we have more faith in non-verbal cues than what is actually said.” — Eva Berkovic, Student Counsellor and Lecturer, MSc Psychology
Audio may be more important for a call’s functionality, but don’t discount the importance of high-quality video.
A collaboration solution must be secure
On the news, over social media, and in movies, cyber-attacks are depicted as pervasive and devastating. But most of us will not be the victims of international spies or espionage, but that does not mean we are not at risk. Varonis identifies several trends to watch for in 2021; the top of their list is remote workers. They state that “As a side effect of remote workforces, cloud breaches will increase.” (https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/ )
When designing video collaboration solutions, enterprise-grade security is a must.
Video is now ubiquitous
When I first started with Polycom (now Poly) almost ten years ago, my colleagues and I would laugh at the marketing speak of the day. We heard something like “video will one day be ubiquitous,” almost in every sales meeting. Though we cringed at the frequency and overuse of the term ubiquitous, the sentiment was right on.
Here we are in 2021, and video, which was already becoming commonplace in the business world, is universal throughout our personal and professional lives. The marketing speak has changed, to things like, “new normal,” or “next normal,” or my current favorite, “work is no longer where we go; it is what we do.” And I have used each of those catchphrases, some, in this article.
Video collaboration is ubiquitous, and the foundational principles of consistency, simplicity, security while providing a high-quality audio and video experience are more important than ever. If we build our world on strong foundations, our world will not fail, including video collaboration.
Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engineering-firms-how-storytelling-can-help-build-your-andy-callan/
https://medium.com/technical-notions/storytelling-for-sales-engineers-3178a558a994
