The Uncanny Valley of ‘Eye Gaze Redirect’ AI
The Nvidia ‘eye gaze redirect’ feature has been causing a stir. Apple also has this option for FaceTime. In essence, this application of AI redirects your eye gaze to make it appear as though you are looking into the lens at all times when you are on video. At first glance, this might seem like a total no-brainer since eye gaze is so tricky on video. When we pull the hood back however, we can see some real issues with this significant adjustment to something that is in fact, highly nuanced, and personal. The way we express with our eyes is idiosyncratic, meaning that everyone has a different ‘eye contact cadence’. The following are just a smattering of examples of how people vary their eye gaze, with each person having their own flavor.👁️ Blink rate While there are average blink rates, people blink differently and at a different rate, there are also a number of nonverbal cues that can be derived from changes in someone’s blink rate). 👀 Looking away and to the left/right/up or downWhether it’s to the left, to the right, upwards and to the right etc. people have unique habits around these that add flavor to our facial expressions and delivery. 😳 😏 Eye widening or narrowing (Squinting)To express interest, surprise, shock, slyness/mischievousness etc., the way we widen, narrow or squint our eyes is a critical component of expressing that clearly. Unsurprisingly, current AI eye gaze redirect technology is binary – adjusting eye gaze to look directly into the lens. No matter what. This presents a big problem because we are losing all of the above eye gaze cues, and more. The tech doesn’t know if you intended to look away or not, but it will keep your eyes fixed into the lens. This is creepy. (Take a look at the couple of images below for examples) There are really only three reasons* why one would wish to not break eye contact with someone, and they are: If you are attracted/amorous of someone (you literally can’t take your eyes off of them) If you are under threat (You won’t allow your enemy out of sight) If you are about to attack (You won’t take your eyes off of your target) *shudder* None of those sound like appropriate behaviors during a professional video call. This is troublesome…and we haven’t even touched the ethical issue of deception. If I am talking to someone who is distracted or multitasking as shown above…I want to know. This is critical information as I am spending time building a relationship over video. Will this tech evolve? Necessarily. But for now, at Virtual Sapiens, we like to focus on using AI to help the actual humans develop skills they can own fully, helping them be intentional about when they look into the lens, and when they don’t. Avoid the uncanny valley of unblinking, arbitrary, direct eye gaze and instead, learn how to enhance your personal eye contact cadence for both in-person and video based interactions. *Source: Desmond Morris, ‘People Watching’
Virtual Backgrounds…Yes, or No?
It is common to spend a lot of time considering the nonverbals of body language. But what about the nonverbal messages we may be sending with things like our clothing…or our backgrounds in virtual meetings? Our background sends a strong nonverbal message in virtual settings. The debate around virtual or real backgrounds has waged since the very early days of the pandemic. While much has evolved since the days of work from home mandates, for those of us who decide, or have opted for a remote element as part of our professional experience, learning how to navigate virtual or real backgrounds is critical to showing up as a prepared, savvy and professional person. At Virtual Sapiens, we are strongly in favor of leveraging real backgrounds whenever possible. And according to a recent survey, we are not alone. This recent study led by HBR marked that only 7.5% of respondents had a positive perception of virtual backgrounds over real/actual room backgrounds. BUT! What if you are traveling and don’t want to show your hotel room bed in the background? What if your company requires the use of a branded virtual background? Or perhaps you are just uncomfortable with showing any aspects of your personal home/room decor in a professional setting. Whatever the reason for deciding to use a virtual over a real background, check out this short video and our points below for some pro tips on how to think about setting yourself up for success whether you use a virtual background or a real one. Tips for real backgrounds: Keep it simple and uncluttered – you can greatly enhance your audience’s ability to focus if you have fewer items in your background Make sure there are no moving objects, or windows (ideally) to avoid distraction A few intentional items can go a long way in helping you appear more unique, and personable. This is often far stronger than a blank, white wall. Tips for virtual backgrounds: Use a green screen (this helps keep the virtual background stable) Consider blurred instead of full on virtual if you are in a location where the above is not possible. Use a branded or office environment background – avoid the ‘fun and quirky’ stock virtual background options – these are great for a virtual happy hour, but for professional meetings can easily send the wrong message about your own level of professionalism What are your favorite background tips?
Nonverbal Mimicry and Cooperation – Does It Work On Video?
Dr. Marono is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to rigorous studies and research in the space of behavioral science and nonverbal communication. Our community wanted to know if there were any studies she has published recently that can help us better understand the nuances of this element of communication and connection. Take a look a Dr. Marono’s own research in nonverbal mimicry and cooperation. This is something Dr. Marono has studied in person, and also over video due to constraints turned into opportunities during the pandemic. In this short video, Dr. Marono summarizes some of her recent research into nonverbal mimicry, what it is, what it is not, and what happens on video. For anyone who is interested in understanding more about trust, cooperation and influence in communication – you should pay attention to this.
Face Touching and How It Affects Your Presence
Face touching…a common, but complex, category of nonverbals. Our face and heads are primary components of our expressivity. Through our faces, we speak and express emotions. Our heads indicate our consideration and interpretations as listeners and contribute to our postural stances. As humans, we interact with our own faces in very idiosyncratic ways, and while for most of us these habits can feel very normal and comfortable, for our audience we can often end up sending messages we do not strictly intend. Check out this short video demonstrating the three main categories of face touching and read on below to understand what you might be missing: https://youtu.be/v30QY4HdRv0 Head in Hand Placing our head in our hands often occurs as a way to help keep our head straight when it is off it’s axis. The effect can be one of fatigue, exhaustion, disinterest Hand over Mouth Having our hand over our mouths when speaking, is a barrier to communication, especially over video This can often muffle our words, and as many people follow lip movement as they listen, can even make it difficult for the listener to hear and retain information Repeated Face Touching While we all touch our faces to scratch an itch, tuck hair behind our ears, stroke a beard, it is the repeated nature of these nonverbals that can send an unintentional message Repeated face touching, a specific hand to face motion that is repeated frequently over the course of an interaction, can be distracting for the listener. In some cases, it may also lower the impression of authority, as it can be perceived as nervous energy. Our assessment product at Virtual Sapiens assesses for each of these three types of face touching behaviors. Since our assessment is specifically designed to promote self-awareness, you can quickly understand your own idiosyncratic habits in one quick presence assessment.
AMA: “What is ‘Inappropriate Affect?'”
Have you ever been speaking with someone and they are saying one thing, but their nonverbals are saying another? ‘Yes – super excited about that…’ May be the words that come out of their mouths, but their body language and vocal tone is suggesting a complete lack of interest… Body posture is stooped, eye gaze is averted, facial expressions are not reacting or varying based on information exchanged (‘dead pan). We have likely all observed this as a listener…and perhaps have been called out on it ourselves. So..what is inappropriate affect exactly? When our nonverbals don’t align with our words or our intention, we call this ‘incongruence’. It can also be referred to as ‘inappropriate affect’. In essence, when what one person expects to see expressed and what actually gets expressed, don’t align. Inappropriate affect can lead to serious communication misfires. https://youtu.be/t2GZ_szRAbc The good news, is that you can often get out ahead of this through the development of self-awareness. In a tactful way, you can share with your audience that for ‘x’ reason, (perhaps it’s a surgery or medication, perhaps you’ve had a really tough day or are getting over feeling ill etc.) you may seem to come across one way, even though you really feel another way about the topic at hand. Being able to articulately claim inappropriate affect takes a lot of awareness. In fact, oftentimes you may even think that it’s just not that obvious….but over video in particular – you are on full display, and any disconnect between your video presence and what your audience expects to see, can really throw a wrench into the goal of communication and connection. Tools like the Virtual Sapiens Assessment or in-call Sidekick can help with the development of deeper self-awareness when it comes to your nonverbals. In using tools like these, you can quickly get a gut check to ensure that what you intend to communicate, is in fact what others perceive. Start your journey towards communication effectiveness today with a free trial!
Cultural Nuance in Nonverbal Communication
One of the most common questions we get from our community, and from customers, is around cultural nuance in nonverbal communication. How do you account for cultural nuances when you are presenting to a global audience? We put this question to Dr. Marono for her thoughts. While universal cues are a safe baseline, it is always a wise decision to do some advance research into cultural norms, customs and standards when presenting in front of a culture that is different from your own. Check out the video below for more cultural context When it comes to our technology, there is a strong reason behind keeping our insights aligned with universal cues, and not getting too prescriptive when it comes to things like hand gestures or facial expressions. Try out our tools for yourself starting with our free Virtual Presence Assessment.
Virtual Presence Trends 2022
For the first time ever, we have data on how professionals tend to show up on video. Over the course of 2022, hundreds of professionals assessed their virtual presence skills by taking one, or more, of our Virtual Presence Assessments. While each individual gains significant value in understanding their own scores and improvement over time, we are also able to better understand some global trends in behaviors over video. Our trends indicate that: Framing is the biggest issue for professionals. 63% of professionals are out of frame. When your are out of frame, you are at a disadvantage. Research has shown that your audience’s impression of you varies depending on where you show up in your frame. For example: If you are too low, or your lens is too high, your authority decreases significantly. If you are too close to the lens, you increase the intensity of the viewing experience for your audience and you reduce the effectiveness of your overall presence because your audience sees less of you. Taking at least two assessments led to improvement for a whopping 93% of professionals. Our Virtual Presence Assessments are designed to develop awareness and benchmark improvement over time. As demonstrated by 93% of professionals who took at least two assessments, the average improvement rate was 17%. This is the first time ever, that every professional on a distributed team can get access to convenient, personalized feedback on their presence and communication. And it works. The top performing area on video is Authority Impression Our data demonstrates that showing up on video with authority is the highest performing category in our virtual presence analysis. Authority impression is influenced by your posture, your eye gaze when speaking and any tendencies to touch your face/sway. While many professionals say they don’t feel as confident on video as they do in person, the great news is that 88% of professionals who took an assessment scored high on their impression of authority….now we can work on being more expressive:) When it comes to expressivity on video, professionals struggle to use hand gestures, vary facial expressions and vocal tone. This leads to low expression and low energy. While this correlates with much of the research out there that shows professionals experience fatigue over the course of days of back to back video meetings, it also indicates that the way we show up may be a contributing factor. Being more engaging and expressive on calls leads to higher levels of engagement overall. As we head into the new year, we will be especially interested to see whether we can identify relationships between calls scoring higher in expressivity and energy (importantly, this doesn’t mean ‘happier or smile-ier’ calls!) and the overall quality and length of the call. Conclusion Taking a look at these relatively simple trends, we can start to understand the power of our virtual presence. Video is a powerful, humanistic channel of communication. It requires special attention in terms of communication awareness, skill and strategy. Here at Virtual Sapiens, we are on a mision to help professionals assess, improve and master their virtual presence – so they can leverage this tool as a core part of their communication toolkit. To see how you do compared to these trends – try out our free assessment tool here.
Nonverbal Communication Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum
“What role does context play in nonverbal communication?” There are seven universal emotions humans, on average, identify through specific expressions: 😀 Happiness😱 Fear😞 Sad🤢 Disgust😲 Surprise😒 Contempt According to anthropology and neuroscience, the main reason we universally recognize these emotions is because of our evolved need to decipher between friend/foe and safety/danger by picking up on certain cues quickly. Now, while it may seem simple to detect someone is happy with a smile, things get considerably more complex when we get into emotions like confidence, comfort, discomfort, trustworthiness etc. These emotions can be expressed in a variety of different ways, depending on the person, their baseline, and the context. https://youtu.be/R7SVTpD9p1s A great example is with arm crossing. We are often quick to judge someone who crosses their arms as being ‘closed off/disinterested’. Without taking the context into consideration, we may not realize that this individual tends to cross their arms as a soothing posture when thinking (they also happen to be nodding their head). Or perhaps, that the AC is on and the individual is cold. This is a small, but powerful example. Think of how many times you may cross your arms not because you are closed off, but because you felt slightly awkward having your arms dangle by your sides? In the world of nonverbal communication, we must take many things into account when we are observing someone’s behaviors. It’s rarely about just one cue. Oftentimes, it’s a cluster of behaviors, within an understood context that will guide us to the most accurate observations. Not to judge someone, but to better understand how we can communicate with them. On the flip side, knowing that those around us may be quick to judge us based on a simple gesture, means we can more intentionally choose how we show up. For example, catching ourselves the next time we have crossed our arms – challenging ourselves to not look away from our computer screens repeatedly… What are some of the ways you might consider context over video specifically?
How To Make Active Listening Second Nature
“How do you juggle active listening and staying on top of your audience’s nonverbals on video?” It often feels like there is way too much going on on video. Even if we know active listening is a powerful tool to leverage when building rapport on video, it is a tricky new skill to consider in addition to the many other things we are doing at the same time. (Like switching screens, sharing screens, monitoring the chat etc.) This is why it is critical to develop new muscles around active listening – so that it becomes second nature. This is true in many areas of life and is in fact how we grow and evolve as dynamic humans. Once we have developed muscle memory around new ways of showing up and communicating, we don’t have to spend the same amount of mental resources on them. After all…if we always had to spend the same amount of energy on new skills, we would never have room to get to the next level! https://youtu.be/RvN-OS6i4qw Give this discussion a listen for some tips and reasoning behind practicing active listening until it becomes a sticky new habit. Pro Tip: Your Sidekick can help you improve your active listening with gentle nudges during video calls. Try it out now for free – we promise it will make your 2023 much easier – we promise:)
Managing A Video Call If You Can’t Tell Others Are Present
‘What do I do if I am on a video call, and others are not exhibiting virtual presence best practices?” Chances are, we have all been in this situation. You are on a call, and you can’t, for the life of you, tell if people are paying attention, if what you are saying is resonating, if certain individuals are looking at you on another screen or just blatantly distracted. In this week’s AMA, Dr. Marono and I go into some detail around things you can do before, during and even after an instance like this with your team. ✨ A big takeaway from this conversation, is that through video, our ability to affect other people’s energy and behavior is very real. Making sure you show up in a way that contributes to a positive, energized call, is key. But so is paying attention to how other people’s behaviors on a call may be influencing you is just as critical.✨