Tokyo Tatemono and Pixie Dust Technologies (CEO, Yoichi Ochiai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) have revealed the impact of online meetings on business people's fatigue. We measured the degree of fatigue of more than 100 employees of Tokyo Tatemono for "web conferences" and "offline (face-to-face) conferences" and conferences in which both were mixed. As a result, the degree of fatigue was highest in "mixed meetings", followed by "face-to-face meetings" and "web meetings". In addition, "web conferencing" tended to be more fatigued when attending from home than when attending from the office.
With the spread of telework due to Korona-ka, offices are required to have added value that makes business people want to work there. Tokyo Tatemono will make use of this result in such a proposal.
The experiment was conducted from October 2020 to March 2009 at the Tokyo Building Yaesu Building (Chuo-ku, Tokyo). Using the existing method of measuring mental fatigue, "flicker measurement (*)", the degree of fatigue due to the meeting was estimated from the difference in flicker values before and after the meeting. At the same time, conditions such as the location, purpose, and role of each meeting were tabulated in a questionnaire to the subjects. As a result, about 300 samples were extracted for the degree of fatigue for each meeting condition.
* If you blink the light at high speed, people do not see it blinking, but if you gradually slow down the blinking speed, there is a timing when you can see the blinking. The frequency of the light that causes the sensation of blinking is called the flicker value. The flicker value is said to decrease with the accumulation of fatigue. In this experiment, the number of samples is limited to about 300, and "it cannot be said that the number of samples is sufficient from a scientific point of view to introduce the difference in the degree of fatigue depending on the meeting conditions with concrete numerical values" (Pixie). As Mr. Sou Nishimura, Lead Engineer of Dust Technologies), the specific flicker value measured in the experiment has not been disclosed.As a result, mixed meetings were "significantly more tired" than web and face-to-face meetings (Mr. Nishimura of Pixie Dust). The degree of fatigue of mixed meetings was high regardless of whether they participated face-to-face in the meeting room or on the web from outside the meeting room. Comparing the degree of fatigue due to the difference in participation method, face-to-face participation was slightly higher than web participation.
In addition, the degree of fatigue of "web conferencing" was higher for those who participated from home than those who participated from their own seats in the office. In addition, ▽ the degree of fatigue of the meeting where the participating members are outside the company is higher than that of the meeting only in the company ▽ the degree of fatigue is higher in the meeting that creates ideas than in the information sharing.
Takashi Sase of the Tokyo Tatemono Building Business Planning Department, who led the experiment, said, "In mixed meetings, the tempo of conversation tends to get worse due to delays in the voice of web participants and image distortion, and it becomes easier to get tired because there is no sense of unity. It's difficult to hypothesize that it's easier to get tired of attending a web conference from home than from your own seat in the office, but I think it's because it's harder to work than in the office due to furniture problems such as desks and chairs at home. "
On top of that, "(based on the result that mixed conferences are easy to get tired even if you participate face-to-face from the conference room), for example, a proposal for planning a conference room that realizes a web conference that is less tiring with high-performance sound and a camera. I want to connect to it. "
In the experiment, we also investigated the effect of "nap" and "exercise" during work on the degree of fatigue. It was estimated using Pixie Dust's original algorithm based on the postures and movements of people taken by multiple cameras installed in the office. As a result, the group who took a "nap" and "exercise" for about 15 minutes at the end of the lunch break had a lower degree of fatigue than the group who did not take it. The effect of lowering the degree of fatigue was greater with "nap" than with "exercise".
This joint research is part of exploring an office that enhances intellectual productivity. Of the three elements that make up "intellectual productivity," "fatigue," "concentration," and "communication," we focused on "fatigue," which is considered to be the most basic. Tokyo Tatemono and Pixie Dust are considering the difference in the degree of fatigue depending on the office layout such as free address or fixed seat, and additional joint research focusing on "communication" in the future.
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Mr. Sase of Tokyo Tatemono, who led the experiment, said, "I was surprised that the web-face-to-face mixed conference had a higher degree of fatigue on the face-to-face side, and the face-to-face side tended to have a higher degree of fatigue." I did. He also laughed bitterly, saying, "It's a painful result for a developer who wants to work in the office." Personally, I was surprised to find that web conferencing is more tiring when attending from "home" than from "office". If the factor is furniture, it may be said that the welfare program that grants furniture purchase costs as telework support is important.