Classification of Functional Attention in Video Meetings

Authors: Anastasia Kuzminykh, Sean Rintel
Venue: CHI 2020
Free from the publisher

AThe study

Two qualitative studies of attention in work meetings. Twelve employees were interviewed, then fifteen other people narrated muted videos of real meetings.

  1. Twelve intervieweesFull-time employees experienced in co-located, remote and hybrid meetings, each interviewed for about 40 minutes.
  2. Interview codingOpen and axial coding of the transcripts drew out what attention does in meetings.
  3. Fifteen narratorsA new set of fifteen people each narrated six short muted videos of real work meetings to an experimenter.
  4. Narration analysisThe words narrators used for attention were analysed across 225 responses from 90 descriptions, followed by debrief interviews.

BWhat the study found

What joining remotely limitsinterviews with twelve employees

  • Interviewees described video as limiting three things attention does in meetings.Joining remotely limited gathering social information, following the work and signalling to others, such as addressing a specific person.
  • Interviewees described finding it hard to read the room when joining remotely.Remote interviewees struggled to see reactions to them, judge when to speak and work out who mattered in the room.
  • Remote interviewees described struggling to follow whiteboards, slides and side conversations.Remote interviewees could not take part when a meeting in the room split into several conversations.

How people read attentionnarrations by fifteen people, and interviews

  • Narrators sometimes reported where someone looked, and sometimes what the look was for.This separates the direction of a look from purposeful attention, such as listening or addressing someone, and from general engagement.
  • Narrators suggested that acting visibly feeds a person's sense of engagement.In debrief interviews, narrators said people who visibly do nothing in a meeting get overlooked.
  • Interviewees said gaze direction on video does not show what someone attends to.Gaze is the easiest kind of attention to detect automatically. The paper does not treat it as a functional type of attention on its own.

The classificationwhat the paper proposes

  • The paper proposes attention as direction, as action and as state.Direction is where someone looks. Action is looking to see, to be seen or to follow the work. State is overall engagement.
  • The paper argues meeting features should start with attention as action.The paper suggests attention as action feeds engagement, so supporting it is the most promising place to begin.

CKey takeaway

Video meeting design can treat attention as action, starting from what attention is for. Features that help people see, be seen and follow the work may also support engagement.

Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.

Abstract

Participants in video meetings have long struggled with asymmetrical attention levels, especially when participants are distributed unevenly. While technological advances offer exciting opportunities to augment remote users’ attention, the phenomenological complexity of attention means that to design attention-fostering features we must first  understand what aspects of it are functionally meaningful to support. In this paper, we present a functional classification of observable attention for video meetings. The classification was informed by two studies on sense-making and selectiveness of attention in work meetings. It includes categories of attention accessible for technological support, their functions in a meeting process, and meeting-related activities that correspond to these functions. This classification serves as a multi-level representation of attention and informs the design of features aiming to support remote participants’ attention in video meetings.

Research brief

By Anastasia Kuzminykh and Sean Rintel.

Takeaway: Supporting attention in video meetings means supporting what attention is for. A functional classification separates attention as direction (where people look), as action (looking to see, to be seen or to follow the work) and as state (engagement). Features should start with attention as action, because it feeds engagement.

Why this matters

What was known
Research and systems have tackled attention in video meetings from many angles, from gaze and eye contact to engagement and immersive environments, but without a shared account of what supporting attention means. In sum, research on attention is very fractured [36]. Thus, there is a need for systematic understanding of what it actually means to support remote user's attention. (Introduction, p. 1)
What this paper adds
An empirically grounded, three-level classification of observable attention in meetings. It covers types of attention, their functions, and the meeting activities that correspond to each function. The intent of our model is provide a language that allows designers to be more deliberate when deciding and articulating what type of attention they wish to foster through their tools. (§INTRODUCTION, p. 2)
Who it matters to
Designers and developers of video meeting features. (§Leveraging the Attention Classification in Design, p. 10)

Research questions

Method and data

Design
Two complementary qualitative studies: semi-structured interviews, then a quasi-experimental narration study to triangulate and extend the interview themes.
Setting
Work meetings in co-located, remote and hybrid configurations. In the second study, participants narrated muted video clips of real work meetings (4 to 6 people, co-located or hybrid) to an experimenter.
Participants / data
Study I: twelve participants (age 21-50, 5f, 7m), all full-time employees with extensive experience of co-located, remote and hybrid meetings. Study II: a new set of fifteen participants (21-36 years, 8f, 7m) who each narrated six short videos.
Duration
Interviews lasted approximately 40 minutes each.
Analysis
Study I: open and axial coding of interview transcripts. Study II: semantic analysis of 'attention identifiers' in 225 responses of observable visual attention from 90 descriptions of 6 videos, plus debrief interviews.

Findings

Questions this paper answers

What does it mean to pay attention in a meeting?
It involves three things that are easily confused. Attention as direction is where you are looking. Attention as action is looking with a purpose (checking reactions, addressing someone or following the whiteboard). Attention as state is a general sense of being mentally present. Each calls for different support. (See §Indicative Attention Identifiers, p. 6; §Inter-dependency of Functional Types of Attention, p. 7.)
Is tracking where people look enough to support attention in video calls?
Not on its own. Gaze direction is the simplest kind of attention to support technically. But without context it does not show what someone is attending to or why, because a person facing the screen may be reading an email. (See §Indicative Attention Identifiers, p. 6; §Level 1: Contextual Complexity Spectrum, p. 8.)
Why do quiet remote participants get overlooked?
Possibly because engagement is judged by what people visibly do. People who visibly do nothing tend to be ignored. Remote participants also feel they have fewer ways to signal attention, such as addressing someone or reacting. (See §Communicative Signaling, p. 5; §Inter-dependency of Functional Types of Attention, p. 7.)

Contributions and implications

Limitations

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Concepts

Attention as Direction
Where someone is looking or facing, observed without any recognised purpose (e.g. Alice is looking at Bob). purely observable attention that constitutes a process, but not a recognized purpose (§INTRODUCTION, p. 2)
Attention as Action
Attention with a direction, a target and a recognisable purpose (e.g. Alice is addressing Bob). which reflects attention processes with a recognized specific purpose (§INTRODUCTION, p. 2)
Attention as State
The third and most contextually complex type (e.g. Alice is attentive): the overall sense of engagement, which reflects only purpose, but no particular process (§INTRODUCTION, p. 2)
Functions of Attention as Action
The three purposes attention actions serve in meetings. Gathering Information ('look to see'), Communicative Signaling ('look to be seen'), and Following Dynamic Processes ('look to be a part of a process') (§INTRODUCTION, p. 2)

Figures

Three-level diagram: Direction, Action and State along a spectrum of contextual complexity, Action splits into Gathering, Signaling and Following functions, State into Engagement, and each function lists meeting activities.
Figure 1. Classification of functional attention From the paper, Fig. 1, p. 1.
Diagram: descriptive attention identifiers narrate visual information as Attention as Direction, and indicative identifiers add an implied purpose and are interpreted as Attention as Action (gathering, signaling, following) or Attention as State.
Figure 3. Results of the Narration Experiment Study (Study II) From the paper, Fig. 3, p. 6.

How to cite

Anastasia Kuzminykh and Sean Rintel. 2020. Classification of Functional Attention in Video Meetings. CHI 2020. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376546

This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{kuzminykh2020classification,
author = {Kuzminykh, Anastasia and Rintel, Sean},
title = {Classification of Functional Attention in Video Meetings},
organization = {ACM},
booktitle = {CHI 2020},
year = {2020},
month = {April},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376546},
doi = {10.1145/3313831.3376546},
}