[Video Call Ringing Sound]
NOAH BAKER: Hello!
VOICE OVER: When COVID-19 hit, video calls suddenly became the new normal.
NOAH: I'm just trying to control two screens at once.
VOICE OVER: In many jobs, including mine, most meetings now take place online.
SHAMINI BUNDELL: No worries.
VOICE OVER: But what kind of effects could this shift to virtual interactions be having?
MELANIE BRUCKS: When the pandemic hit, I had so many people reaching out to me
asking about how to run Zoom studies and what’s the research out there.
VOICE OVER: Now, new research shows that talking in person can be very different to talking over a video call,
at least when it comes to creativity.
MELANIE: We were really interested when we saw the results –e!
that simply being in the same physical space as someone else improves idea generation.
VOICE OVER: Every week, I have an online catch up with my manager, Noah, where we discuss possible upcoming film projects.
SHAMINI: There’s this paper coming out which is about creativity and particularly creativity over video calls.
NOAH: Obviously, a lot of my life has been spent on video calls over the last two years,
so data on video calls and creativity – definitely a film I’m interested in.
SHAMINI: I was hoping we could basically discuss some ideas for how the film is made...
VOICE OVER: Coming up with ideas and discussing them over video call is exactly what Melanie Brucks set out to study.
MELANIE: This work looks at what we are now calling the new normal, which is virtual interaction,
and how that might affect innovation.
VOICE OVER: To test this idea, Melanie set up an experiment.
I’ve roped in my colleagues Nick and Flora to demonstrate while Melanie explains.
MELANIE: Participants would either go into the same physical space, which was just an empty lab room,
or we would split them into two separate lab rooms and have them communicate with video technology, and we had them generate ideas.
NICK PETRIĆ HOWE: So, our task now is to generate creative uses for a frisbee.
FLORA GRAHAM: Ooh, a frisbee!
NICK: The first thing I think of straight away, because I've actually done this, is as a plate.
FLORA: Of course, frisbee plate.
VOICE OVER: The study found that the in-person pairs generated more ideas.
MELANIE: There's around a 2.5 idea difference. So, in-person groups are generating around 16 or 17 ideas,
whereas the virtual condition is generating between 13 and 15.
VOICE OVER: But is this really that surprising?
MELANIE: A lot of people mentioned, yeah, Zoom is just a worse version. Of course, people are just bad at Zoom.
Everything is going to be worse at Zoom.
VOICE OVER: So, maybe this has nothing to do with creativity? Melanie tested this with a second task.
MELANIE: And what we asked participants was to identify their most creative idea.
FLORA: My favourite was definitely Nick's bubble wrap transport.
NICK: I liked the ant stopper.
FLORA: Plate is the go-to frisbee use.
NICK: Yeah, plate is definitely...
FLORA: You know, you've got guests over. We've all been there.
NICK: Yeah, I think plate is the one.
VOICE OVER: The idea-selection task uses very different skills from the brainstorming task.
MELANIE: But what’s interesting is Zoom wasn’t universally bad, or video conferencing wasn’t universally bad.
When it came to idea selection, we found, if anything, the virtual condition was better.
VOICE OVER: So, what is it that might make idea generation, and only idea generation, harder over a video call?
MELANIE: We looked at how much participants felt they connected with the other through self-report.
We looked at unconscious connection through mimicry. We looked at trust through a monetary game.
We also looked at whether there was cross-talk, where people were talking over each other, for communication coordination.
What we find is, for the social connection, no difference between conditions.
For the communication coordination, we did find slight differences but it couldn't explain the effect.
VOICE OVER: But there was one difference between virtual and in-person conversations that did seem to make a difference,
and Melanie spotted it by tracking people’s gaze.
MELANIE: Are you looking at your partner, are you looking at the surrounding environment, or are you looking at the task?
And it's interesting again, if you ask people what their intuition is, they think that there's more social connection
when we're in person and so we're probably engaged with our partner more.
But we found the exact opposite. So, we found that in the virtual condition people are looking significantly more at their partner –
almost double – and because of that, that's at the expense of their broader environment.
VOICE OVER: Previous research has shown that people are more creative when they’re less focused.
MELANIE: When I’m communicating in person, I have the entire environment as our shared environment
Wherever I look, that is going to be part of my partner’s environment too.
However, when we’re talking virtually, our shared environment is pretty limited to the screen, and we thought that this could lead
to more focus, which would hurt idea generation because we're actually the most creative when we're unfocused and free.
VOICE OVER: So, rather than online conversations being inherently always better or worse,
it could be that we need to adjust how we talk based on what we want to achieve.
MELANIE: I use this now all the time. I don't have evidence for this yet but, based on my theory,
I always suggest turning off the camera during idea generation, so you can walk around, you can look around.
VOICE OVER: The idea that virtual meetings could impact things like focus and idea generation is likely to be of great interest
to people around the world. But it’s not as simple as saying, right, let’s get back to the office then.
MELANIE: It's not like we have to be in person. It’s not also that it doesn’t matter whether or not we’re in person.
VOICE OVER: Creativity and innovation are important in a lot of jobs, including mine,
but online meetings still offer some advantages.
NOAH: The ability to have meetings more quickly, potentially with more people, in different places of the world,
I think could also be a massive benefit. So, I can see some of those effects potentially cancelling out.
VOICE OVER: Melanie is keen to test her theories further, but there's a bit of a problem.
MELANIE: All of this research has been halted because we can't collect in-person data without people wearing masks
and that, of course, completely changes the experience, so there's tons of difference experiments I would love to run
that I haven't been able to do because we can't run in-person studies right now.
VOICE OVER: But for now, Melanie's work has certainly given me something to consider
when I'm brainstorming ideas for my next film.
SHAMINI: And I have quite a lot of ideas for this one.
NOAH: I quite like the idea of using this discussion of how to make this story as the backbone of the story.
It is so nicely meta.
NOAH: This is going to be an interesting one. Thanks!
SHAMINI: Amazing. Thanks, Noah. See you later. Bye.
NOAH: Bye!