With RTO in full swing across all industries, taking Zoom calls at our desks is more common than ever before. For some people, this means back-to-back, non-stop Zoom meetings for hours at a time. With noise-canceling headphones or high-end headsets and high quality video conferencing streams from Zoom, it is easy for someone to get immersed into their call and speak as if they’re meeting that person/group in-person. That’s where the problem comes in for the modern-day office. Immersed attendees lose track of their environment and tend to raise the volume of their voice without being aware of it. This can make for a miserable experience for co-workers sitting nearby. Microphone tech is such that the speaker does not need to speak louder to be heard by others – but there isn’t anything flagging to them that they’re speaking louder than normal or at a volume that may be intrusive to people nearby. So I’m proposing a possible idea about how to solve for this: Offer some sort of indicator/warning message when someone is speaking at a volume that is XX% greater than what Zoom has sensed as their normal/average speaking volume. It might offer a message like: “Heads up! Zoom has detected a louder-than-normal speaking volume from you. Consider speaking more softly to avoid disturbing others around you.” This feature may warrant some logic in that it only turns on when there’s an external mic (headset or headphones) set as the current mic. But think something like this would result in office environments that are more productive and have a better zen feeling overall. Thanks for your consideration!
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Love the idea of a Zoom volume indicator! It would definitely help with:
Reduced noise pollution in shared workspaces.
Improved awareness for users speaking too loudly.
Logic for external mics only makes sense.
Overall, a win for productivity and workplace harmony.