Introduction
This page is designed to take you step by step through important considerations to make when designing a room for video conferencing, using a model room (pictured below)
One of the major uses for video conferencing is holding multi-point meetings, which allow participants to efficiently collaborate on projects over great distances. Careful and well planned design of such rooms can greatly add to the experience users will have while in meetings, reducing fatigue thus helping maintain concentration for more productive sessions.
This page outlines in detail a number of things to consider while designing a meeting room for video conferencing.
This page will look practically at equipment you should consider installing, then explaining how these items effect sound and video quality etc. For a more general overview of these core principles, visit the Room Design - Overview page.
Room, Walls and Decor
What to consider
Starting with identifying a room for video conferencing meetings, there are already several things to consider before purchasing fittings, equipment and furniture. For example, the shape of your room will initially effect the amount of reverberation your are going to experience.
Colours in your room will produce indirect light which will colour the other objects in your room. Indirect light is caused by surfaces reflecting a certain amount of light that hits them onto another object. When this reflection occurs, the light is coloured by the initial surface colour. For example, if you have bright green walls, expect participants in your room to be lit with an unhealthy green glow.
Floors will also play a role in room acoustics, dependent on the material they are covered with.
Room Shape
Square rooms will provide the worst reverberation and will need to be countered with many of the suggestions below. The ideal shape for a meeting room is a rectangle, though any non uniform shape will reduce reverberation.
Walls
Walls should be painted a neutral colour, ideally a mid shade of grey. Other colours which are suitable are grey blues, and grey greens. If reverberation is a major issue in your room, it may be worth looking in to use of sound dampening paints. Additionally all paint should be matte finish, as gloss creates unwanted reflections of light.
The image to the right shows a rectangular room painted with a neutral grey colour.
Floors
The ideal situation is to have carpeted floors as wood, concrete, and vinyl all produce reverberation which makes voices hard to hear both locally and remotely.
Windows
What to consider
The biggest issue which windows in rooms bring to video conferencing is that they provide an uncontrollable source of light into a room, which is often in the form of harsh direct sunlight. Direct sunlight causes heavy contrast between areas light and areas not in its path. The result is often a poorly exposed image which will cause participants to look either too bright or too dark, depending on the overall conditions of the room.
Curtains and Blinds
If your room has windows it is important that you have some way to manually control the light they may allow into the room. Best case scenario is heavy curtains, however blinds are an adequate alternative.
Glass
Another possibility is to consider using frosted glass instead of clear glass, which will diffuse incoming light, reducing harsh contrast. In this case, blinds are as effective as curtains as the small amount of light they allow through is no longer concentrated.
Furniture
What to consider
Furniture can effect your video conferencing room in several ways. Firstly, the materials will effect the acoustics of a room. The colour of the table is another important consideration as this will be a primary source of indirect light on participants faces. Indirect lighting was discussed in more detail above in the Rooms Walls and Decor section.
Chairs
Using padded chairs will help dampen sound, while using hard surfaced furniture will not. If your room is relatively bare (especially rooms without curtains), padded chairs are an efficient way to help reduce reverberation. Avoid chairs with patterns for reasons stated above in the Rooms Walls and Decor section of this page.
Table
A table for a meeting room should be rectangular with its length running parrallel to the long walls in the room. This allows participants to sit in a horseshoe arrangement (see image to the right, ensuring each person can make eye contact with the screens and cameras.
Ideal colours for the table are mid tone browns, which reflect a certain degree of light to reduce shadows on faces while not making participants look unnatural. Heavier tables will also help reduce reverberation.
Table Inputs
Another useful feature to look for in a conferencing room table is an input bay. An input bay is generally set into a table and provides participants with access to powerpoints, ethernet, and other connections such as a VGA/DVI connection to a secondary input for the video conferencing device. The image to the right shows the general idea of what an input bay looks like.
A VGA/DVI connection will allow participants to plug laptops into the video conferencing unit's secondary input, thus allowing them to share the contents of their screen with other participants at all the farsites.
Input bays obviously require th table to have wiring running up to its top, therefore planning needs to take place in advance as to how cabling will run underfloor between the conferencing unit, power and ethernet lines, and the input bay.
The primary advantage of this forward planning is users requiring these connections do not need to run wires dangerously from the table to walls and components nested in cupboards.
Lighting
What to consider
Lighting is very important to ensure participants in a video conference are clearly visible to other sites. As a generally rule in a meeting room ensuring even, diffused lighting is the most important consideration as participants are relatively scattered and facing different directions.
Ceiling Lighting
Ceiling lighting is usually provided in the form of fluorescent lighting with reflective material to diffuse the light emitted from them. This ensures light travels out from the light source in a variety of directions, reducing strong shadows. An example is pictured to the right
Additional Inputs
What to consider
H.323 video conferencing units generally have the ability to share content using H.239. This allows participants to share desktop screens, and physical documents via a document camera.
Resident Computer
Many rooms simply provide users with the option to share desktops by bringing in their own laptop and connecting it to the conferencing unit input (often via an input bay as above), however some sites also like to have a resident computer which users can simply plug a flash drive into and display a powerpoint via this.
In these cases, the resident computer generally be the default secondary input for the video conferencing unit, allowing for fast and reliable content sharing.
Typically a resident computer would use a wireless mouse and keyboard, so users can interact with it from their seats, without cables.
Document Camera
An ideal solution for a document camera in a meeting room is to have a ceiling mounted unit which looks directly down on a certain position of the table. The camera angle is not adjustable, however zoom is, which allows users to enlarge documents with smaller text as required. The zoom on these cameras is generally powerful enough to make even 2-3 mm text readable.
These document cameras are generally quite expensive and should only be considered if you feel the room will get a lot of use from one. Cheaper alternatives do exist, and normally come in the form of a unit which sits on the table with a crane arm.
Other Items
Telephone
Always provide a telephone in the same room as a video conferencing system. It is extremely important to have a contingency in place so participants can phone their remote parties if they are having technical difficulties with the equipment.
Clock
Consider providing a clock. This allows participants to keep an eye on the time without having to check watches, which can appear inconsiderate or inpolite during a meeting.
Wireless Controllers
Wireless controllers can be used to control many aspects of a meeting room with modern equipment in it. Applications include control of the video conferencing units dialing, volume functions etc. control of room lighting, document camera zoom and focus, screen power and many other things. They also have the potential to allow for easy switching of inputs when connecting multiple devices to a conferencing unit's secondary input, if the appropriate hardware is installed.
