Opinion piece by Stuart Pringle
At Omega Digital, our collaboration solutions now focus on delivering exceptional user experiences and meeting equity. No longer is the focus on the highest speed, best resolution, etc, etc. but rather on making collaboration accessible, reliable, and easy to use, with all participants having a similar ability to participate and contribute. Don’t get me wrong, the resolutions, feeds and speeds and so on are all part of the bigger picture of a successful call but it’s an exceptional user experience that we use to measure success rather than technical call reports.
With the price point of collaboration systems at just a fraction of what they were a few years ago and the fact that individuals who do hybrid work can use their laptops or mobile devices to collaborate, accessibility is no longer a stumbling block. The richness of the experience however varies dramatically. The ability to share PC-based content can be augmented with interactive whiteboards (some of which can remove the person writing on the whiteboard from the image), additional cameras and microphones that focus on users (who may move in the venue) and loudspeaker systems that associate the audio of someone who is speaking with the position of their video image all add to the user experience in the room but must also be able to add a similar experience to those not in the room.
New and different technologies have been introduced to create this meeting equity (all in the call have an equitable experience) such as the return of on-table cameras, interaction with shared content (e.g. whiteboard sharing platforms) and even changes to display sizes and resolutions. For the first time, and due to collaboration platforms catering to the best format to have participants equally sized when sharing content, the pro-AV industry has created 21:9 aspect ratio displays, differing from the more common 16:9 and 16:10 standards. The adaption to this new format has not only driven the production of compatible screens but is also driving the momentum behind LED technology in the conference room as along with a video processor, it allows for screens to natively be, or show, multiple different source resolutions on the LED canvas.
Ease of use has been much improved, with the biggest yet simplest factor being that the individual’s interface on their personal device is almost identical to the conference room interface. Secondly, booked calls require the mere push of a “Join” button to establish a call and ad hoc calls can be established by searching a contact directory. Virtual assistants / conversational AI will make collaboration calling and many other functions as easy as asking for it. Transcripts are already available with AI enabling the ability to hone into the parts of the session that are of interest to a participant reviewing the meeting.
There is no doubt that the trend of collaboration meetings being integrated into our daily work lives and business workflows will continue. Various other productivity tools now leverage the power of smart collaboration environments to ensure seamless flows.
The technology used for collaboration is changing rapidly and no one knows exactly what the future holds. All we can do is hold on tight, embrace the change and keep measuring ourselves by the customers’ experiences.