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Notetaker bots in a Google Hangouts meeting

Have you ever been on a work call which looks like this? You’re there to see one individual, but multiple chatbot notetakers have also joined! And when an notetaker bot* is* joined to the Meeting, it’s depicted as the same size as a whole person!

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Here’s an example of bot notetakers on a call with Vanessa and James as we prepared to announce a new Calm Tech Launch Program.)

This is the format for most of my online meetings over the last year or two. Every time I join a meeting, a transcription bot joins too. Sometimes two or more! If you don’t allow them to join your Google Meeting, they are very persistent, with notifications requesting access throughout the call!

It’s inevitable that we’ve lost much of the warmth of our video calls, but even though body language and presence is deeply flattened, we shouldn’t lose even more dimension due to the rise of bots.

On the one hand, you know people add bots to their meetings, so you’re aware of them. But the way Google Hangouts presents them, the awareness is the same size as the human participants, so you’re all TOO aware of them.

By simply taking up large amounts of space, bots de-emphasize the human contributors. Not only does this mean there’s less room for human faces in the meeting, but when there are many bots in a meeting, they can easily take up more real estate on the display than the actual people.

While bot indicators should be visible, their presence on the call could be displayed differently. If they’re a participant’s companion, shouldn’t they be the size of a cat or mouse? If they’re not talking or acting as humans, souldn’t they be more diminutive?

Here’s notetaker bots could be displayed on calls

Rather than letting bots continue to dominate our online meetings, there are some better alternatives:

1. Picture in Picture

Represent bots in a meeting within the picture of their individual, like an icon of an AI bot and the brand of the bot.

Here’s an example of what it could look like in Hangouts with this layout.

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This scales nicely when there are multiple people and AI notetakers, and it shows which individuals are bringing which bots.

If done poorly, bots can still take over a bit of the picture of the human they’re assisting.

2. Right side Column

Another example would be a small bar on the side with the bot. This allows for many bots in the meeting without taking up human real estate. The right column can be scrolled through to see what bots are there, and to whom they are assigned.

Below shows notetaker bots in a meeting hanging out in their own bot side channel, leaving the human participants to more seamlessly interact with each other.

This is a design choice made by Zoom, which makes it far more possible to see more of a person and focus on them–-instead of a bot–-during a meeting.

What next?

Shrinking bot contributors increases information that could help with connection and communication. I hope this will be the way of the future!