The Medium is the Message

 

During a recent dinner event my boyfriend, Rich, and I found ourselves seated at a round table in an elegant restaurant where the acoustics made it challenging for us to hear any conversation. We smiled at each other and joked about how we could at least hear each other. Just then we heard laughter breakout from across the large table and we picked up on the word “infertility” followed by laughter and the word “Bush”!

 

The sounds carried randomly and I was reminded of the game Telephone. I used to play that game with such amusement as a child. The object was to whisper into the ear of the person next to you a message or word and see if the original word or message would survive as the message is passed on through the end of group people huddled in a circle.

 

Our evening progressed with slightly more amusement as the lady to the left of Rich tried to engage Rich into the conversation sparked when someone said “Bush”. I suppose the topic of politics around this election season is to be expected. But what was odd were the non-sequesters being thrown out and intertwined into the evening’s conversation.  So not only could we not hear, but we were also about to find our selves talking to someone who brought up out-of-context topics. (This same individual is hard of hearing and spoke with a monotone voice.)

 

Fast forward an hour and we continue to politely try to show through facial expressions and verbal cues that we are interested in the topics and following (or trying to follow) the mind numbing conversation. Rich later admitted that he would have left (or ran out) without word, but he said as I was with him he chose to stay.

 

At different points in those very long two hours both Rich and I found ourselves separately reaching our patience threshold and asked to be briefly excused so we could (gently) bang our head against a brick wall. I looked at my Jasmine tea and wondered if it had been spiked.

The bizarre breakdown in communication can leave one feeling they are in some psychedelic twilight zone. This holds true even for all social situations ranging from work to personal life. So the moral of the story is that we need to generally rely on multiple senses when engaging in most social situations to decrease ambiguity.

 

This brings me to the topic of Video Conferencing. This is a means through which communication lead through mediums that support multiple channels or senses. It is both my privilege and challenge to learn about Video Conferencing experiences specifically to assist in the designs of such products. As a User Experience designer this entails being knowledgeable about the mediums (e.g. the video conferencing tools and peripheral devices) that support communication and the persona’s of those who use these mediums.

 

In this blog I plan on sharing my thoughts on both the mediums and the quality of the messages. Marshal McLuhan would be proud ;-)