Frictionless Zooming In: Remote Meetings, From a Train Car to Grid View

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I zoom into Zoom and go from the train station platform to the teleconferencing platform that became ubiquitous during the early 2020s. This episode opens in Logan, UT, at Utah State University, and I cover early interest and delivery of distance education by train. From there, I cover Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis, a series of fulcrum points in which a handful of interface decisions took on the weight of temporal policy. Zoom was preferred because it allowed for a quicker join route: Schedule -> Link -> Join. In 2020, leaders and stakeholders at Zoom made several decisions worth highlighting. Some include lifted time limits, single sign-on (Clever), security defaults, and novel ideas about remote meetings becoming policy. Along the way, I also consider Zoom's promise of being the frictionless option. This meant a seamlessness that burgeoned, but that scale carried its own consequences in zoom fatigue, oversight, and safety. ⭐️ https://www.usu.edu/tlt/zoom/timeline