How close the words need to be
Your eyes don’t have to hit the lens exactly. What counts is the angle between the lens and the word you’re reading, and that depends on how far away the phone is.
| Phone to your eyes | To the side or above (1°) | Below: about Gao’s peak (2°) | Below: still above chance (3°) | Below: Chen’s conservative design rule (5°) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 in (30 cm) | 0.2 in (5 mm) | 0.4 in (1.1 cm) | 0.6 in (1.6 cm) | 1 in (2.7 cm) |
| 18 in (46 cm) | 0.3 in (8 mm) | 0.6 in (1.6 cm) | 0.9 in (2.4 cm) | 1.6 in (4 cm) |
| 24 in (61 cm) | 0.4 in (1.1 cm) | 0.8 in (2.1 cm) | 1.3 in (3.2 cm) | 2.1 in (5.3 cm) |
Where the columns come from:
- 1 degree
- Milton Chen, Stanford, 2002. For looks up, left and right, “the looker can look at most 1° away from the camera before perception of eye contact is lost.”
- 5 degrees
- Also Chen, who calls it “a conservative solution” and works it out to 1 inch for a cell phone at 1 foot.
- 2 and 3 degrees
- Gao and colleagues, 2024. Ratings of eye contact peaked 1.76 degrees below the lens and stayed above chance to about 3 degrees.
Chen found people “an order of magnitude less sensitive” to a look below the eyes than to a look left, right or above, so a teleprompter’s text belongs under the lens, not beside it.
Why wide lines give you away
The angle applies sideways too, and that’s the hard part on a phone. Take a screen 2.5 inches wide. Read a line that fills it from a foot away, and your eyes travel about 6 degrees to each side of center. A line one inch wide cuts that to about 2.4 degrees. Hold the phone two feet away and those become 3 and 1.2.
Nothing on a phone keeps you inside 1 degree the whole time. You can only get closer to it.
What to do on your next take
- Keep the line you’re reading at the top of the screen, under the front camera, and let the text scroll up to it. Your eyes then stay in one place. They don’t travel down the page.
- Keep lines short. Make the text bigger or the column narrower until a line is only a few words.
- Move the phone further away. At two feet, every number in the table doubles. Use a tripod or a stand, and raise the text size until you can read it comfortably.
- Put the lens level with your eyes. The 2024 study kept the camera at eye level. With a phone propped low, you’re looking down whatever the text does.
- At the end of a sentence, pause and look at or just under the lens.
How the usual options compare
| Option | Where your eyes go | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Notes app | Down the screen, further as you read | Free and already on your phone, but viewers can see you reading |
| Cue cards by the camera | To the side | That’s the direction people catch soonest, and you lose your place when you change cards |
| Memorizing | At the lens | It takes the longest, and a lost line means another take |
| Teleprompter app | Just under or beside the lens, depending on the app | Check where the text sits. Many apps put it beside the lens or have you drag it into place |
| Beam-splitter rig | Into the lens, because the words reflect in glass in front of it | The closest match, but it’s hardware to buy and carry, and the text has to be mirrored |
| AI eye-contact fix | Wherever you like, because software redraws your eyes afterwards | We haven’t tested these, so we can’t tell you how they look. REGENT X doesn’t have one |
How to read without sounding like you’re reading
- Memorize the first line and read the rest. You start out looking straight at the lens, and your opening gets your full attention.
- Write the way you talk. Use contractions and short sentences, then read it aloud once and fix anything you trip on.
- Put a line break where you’d breathe.
- Start at your real pace. If the text runs ahead of you, slow it down. Here’s how to measure your pace.
- If you slip, keep recording: pause, breathe and say the sentence again, then cut the mistake later. That’s quicker than starting over.
What these studies can’t tell you
Both studies are small. Chen had 16 observers judge a few recorded people on a large projected display, and says more people should be tested. Gao’s team had 17 people rate still photos of 4 actors, taken with a webcam at 20 and 24 inches, and says stills don’t capture a real conversation.
They also disagree. Chen suggested staying under 5 degrees below, while in Gao’s data the effect faded by about 3. An older Bell Labs figure, cited by Chen, put the limit at 4.5 degrees to the side and 5.5 above or below, far looser than Chen’s own result.
We couldn’t find a study of vertical video filmed on a phone. Use the table as a guide. Closer is safer, and a quick test take will show you more than a chart can.
Sources
- Milton Chen, “Leveraging the Asymmetric Sensitivity of Eye Contact for Videoconferencing”, CHI 2002.
- Alice Gao and colleagues, “Don’t Look at the Camera: Achieving Perceived Eye Contact”, 2024.