Subject: [Tools-discuss] MeetEcho A/V UI Suggestion

From: "Pete Resnick" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2020 15:42:25 -0500

So this is a more general change of UI than other suggestions, but might 
solve the problems people are having with the UI for muting/unmuting of 
video and audio, queueing, etc.

Right now, you have the "Queue", a list of people "Sending Media", and 
the rest of the "Particpants". I suggest changing that middle list to 
"The Floor". You should be able to "Request the Floor", which puts you 
in the queue. The chair can "Grant the Floor" to people in the queue (or 
I suppose straight from the "Participants" list, though that might be 
considered rude of the chair). You may (if allowed by the chair or the 
config) "Take the Floor", which moves you straight from the 
"Participants" to "The Floor". And of course you'll want to be able to 
"Leave the Floor" or "Leave the Queue".

The change above is somewhat boring by itself, but what it allows you to 
do is separate the concepts of muting/unmuting of your audio and video 
from the idea of going to the Queue or the Floor. That way I can have 
two big obvious buttons to mute or unmute my audio and video, 
independent of whether I am on the Floor or not. You can add UI so that 
I see my video locally if my video is turned on, and I can see a muted 
or unmuted microphone icon over it depending on the state of my mic. 
Then, when I go to the Floor, there's no question of whether or not I am 
sending audio/video. (Or at the very least, we're back to the same 
problem with every other A/V tool of people yelling, "Pete, unmute your 
audio." But hopefully this UI would make it a bit more obvious.)

Hope that helps.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best

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From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2020 22:56:59 +0200

On 2020-07-29, at 22:42, Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> wrote:
> The Floor

Makes a lot of sense.

As a refinement, I would offer that there is a difference between the Mic line (where you are seen and speaking, but can naturally take turns), and taking over the projector (of which there is only one in the room).  So granting someone the Mic doesn’t mean that they should be (willfully or accidentally) replacing the shared screen.  That is even more important as there are usually three roles on the floor:

— Chairs
— Presenters
— Head of mic line, plus possible someone standing there with you as a counterpoint

Apart from that (important) detail, I think that moving the interface from thinking in terms of media streams (which are the natural way of thinking for a Meetecho developer) to actual application concepts such as “The Floor”, “The presenter” (what a meeting participant has in mind) makes sense.
Usually each participant can decide at the start of the meeting whether they want to be seen, and can get the camera access dialog behind them (same for mic access dialog).
The chairs can decide whether they want to have a gallery view (rare, but sometimes useful) or the usual screen-sharing one for the segment of the meeting.
(And I like meetecho’s current ability to rudely grab the Mic, which is a bit like “point of order” in the traditional meeting organization.)

I’m not sure we need all the above, but it would be a better mapping of our meetings to the digital world, and it is exactly what makes web meeting software situated software.

Grüße, Carsten

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From: "Pete Resnick" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2020 16:25:35 -0500

On 29 Jul 2020, at 15:56, Carsten Bormann wrote:

> As a refinement, I would offer that there is a difference between the 
> Mic line (where you are seen and speaking, but can naturally take 
> turns), and taking over the projector (of which there is only one in 
> the room).  So granting someone the Mic doesn’t mean that they 
> should be (willfully or accidentally) replacing the shared screen.

I agree. I thought about adding something about sharing the screen 
(i.e., projecting a presentation), but because you really only want one 
screen shared at a time, it seemed like a pretty separate function. I 
think something like the "presentation token" being handed to (or taken 
away from) anyone on the Floor by the chair is the right concept.

> That is even more important as there
> are usually three roles on the floor:
>
> — Chairs
> — Presenters

Yes, though I think it is reasonable in some groups (as I have seen us 
do in person) to have between 2 and 4 people who are neither the 
Presenter or the Chair in a colloquy on the floor about some particular 
point. I like the UI of having a Floor where any number of people (as 
granted or tolerated by the chair) can all have their mics and videos on 
at their discretion and engage in a discussion.

Zoom has their "webinar" concept, where there are three similar 
categories, but they are much more constrained than MeetEcho (which is 
one of the reasons that I like MeetEcho for our purposes).

> Apart from that (important) detail, I think that moving the interface 
> from thinking in terms of media streams (which are the natural way of 
> thinking for a Meetecho developer) to actual application concepts such 
> as “The Floor”, “The presenter” (what a meeting participant 
> has in mind) makes sense.

Exactly my thought. "Media Streams" is a developer's concept. It mostly 
(and accidentally) corresponds to the floor, but it makes the UI a bit 
weird.

> Usually each participant can decide at the start of the meeting 
> whether they want to be seen, and can get the camera access dialog 
> behind them (same for mic access dialog).
> The chairs can decide whether they want to have a gallery view (rare, 
> but sometimes useful) or the usual screen-sharing one for the segment 
> of the meeting.

Yep.

> (And I like meetecho’s current ability to rudely grab the Mic, which 
> is a bit like “point of order” in the traditional meeting 
> organization.)

Or the document editor who has to come up to the mic to answer the 
question. Or the more "exuberant" of us who run up to the mic to make 
our very important point on this topic. :-)

> I’m not sure we need all the above, but it would be a better mapping 
> of our meetings to the digital world, and it is exactly what makes web 
> meeting software situated software.
>
> Grüße, Carsten

Yes.

pr