Designing Silence-Adaptive Interventions for Video Meeting Systems

Silent moments in video meetings are a ubiquitous phenomenon in collaboration and are encountered frequently. While silence itself is not inherently detrimental, the discomfort it can induce has potential to significantly affect meeting performance and overall well-being of the meeting participants. The understanding of silence’s impact, particularly in a video meeting context, remains scarce, with limited knowledge on how to design video meeting systems that enable meeting participants to apply strategies and mitigate the silences’ potential negative consequences. In our work, we perform a design science research project to better understand silent moments in meetings and derive design knowledge on how to better support meeting participants in such moments of silence. We instantiate our design in form of a high-fidelity Figma prototype and a Zoom plugin and evaluate it in a vignette study. With our work, we aim to support individuals to cope with silent moments faster and more comfortably.