Video-Teleconference Team Collaboration: Identifying the Causes of Delays in Meeting Start Times

This paper presents evidence that operational video-teleconference-room (VTC) interfaces contribute to delaying the start of meetings in corporate settings. Some companies rely on VTCs for cost-effective collaboration across locations; however, if VTCs contribute to meeting delays, they result in lost productivity for entire teams. To explore this notion, the team recorded observations of human subjects in corporate VTC meetings, and identified the various challenges in collecting user-interface data in that environment. The analysis and discussion shows that improvement in equipment setup times would contribute to reducing the delay in meeting start times. Furthermore, evidence points to the significance of the time equipment-use begins, rather than the time it ceases. The data collected is vital to continue research into intelligent user interfaces, assistive agents, and context modeling for improving the usability of VTC equipment.