Fatigued by yourself? Towards understanding the impact of self-view designs in virtual meeting software

Video meetings are essential for our life. Besides their relevance and advantages, users increasingly observe the negative phenomenon of virtual meeting fatigue (VMF). VMF is described as the feeling of exhaustion during virtual meetings when overusing virtual meeting software. Virtual meeting software presents additional technical stimuli that are not present in offline meetings and require additional cognitive resources. One of these stimuli is the self view feature, a mirrored image of oneself shown during the meeting which allows controlling the personal appearance. However, research is scarce about the trade off between the benefits of control and the disadvantages of the additional cognitive load of the self view. In our pilot study with 17 participants, we want to understand the impact of three self view designs (self view on, off, initial) on users’ cognitive load, self awareness, perceived control, and VMF. Therefore, we propose a research model and report initial results