Scientific Whitepaper 2024 – “The Effects of Industry Leading Voice Pick-up on Conversation Quality and Efficiency”

In today’s workplace, professionals are using digital tools and platforms to communicate, share, and co-create with colleagues, clients, and partners. The modern workforce is reliant on these digital tools and platforms to enable successful communication, including clear calls where both sides of the conversation can be heard. Although video collaboration tools have gained popularity quickly, audio is and will always be the most important tool for successful verbal communication. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of background noise on a conversation through a Unified Communications Platform and whether headsets with noise-reduction microphone technology provide benefits to the speakers.

For people working in noisy environments, like the open office, noise in the background can be sent through to the receiver, making it difficult for both speakers to have a clear, natural, and efficient conversation. Though people may not realize or think about it while on calls, understanding speech in noise requires additional cognitive effort. This, in turn, limits the amount of cognitive resources that can be used to listen, process, and have an efficient conversation.

The study presented in this scientific whitepaper evaluated the quality of conversation dynamics (how the study participants interacted) while collaborating on a shared task via a Unified Communications Platform, as well as study participants’ subjective experiences (listening effort and concentration difficulty).

Download the full whitepaper below.