HCC: Small: A Joint Action Approach to Understanding and Supporting Interpersonal Attention In Virtual Organizations

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This project will develop a theoretical and practical framework for understanding and supporting processes of interpersonal attention management in virtual organizations of geographically distributed individuals. Research on virtual organizations (VOs) - aggregations of individuals, facilities and resources that span geographic and institutional boundaries - is critical because VOs are an increasingly common work structure. They enable interaction between individuals who might not otherwise work together, the sharing of scarce resources, and allow novel ways of solving problems. Despite these advantages, members of VOs often cannot work together as effectively as those who are collocated. One reason for this is the difficulty of opportunistic, informal interactions in VOs. These interactions are critical to troubleshooting and coordination, as when co-workers ask quick questions or respond to others' requests, exchange information about the task or environment, or make spur-of-the-moment decisions. While many virtual organizations provide basic communication tools such as instant messaging or video conferencing, members often cannot use these effectively because the tools lack support for the subtlety and nuance of managing one's availability and attention to others. As a result, many people only sporadically attend to messages from collaborators, or may abandon technologies altogether. One problem limiting research progress in this area is that prior work has not considered attention management as a form of joint action in which both parties act in response to each other. This research addresses this problem by developing a theoretical and practical framework for understanding the joint and adaptive nature of attention management. Through a combination of field and laboratory efforts, this work addresses three issues: (1) What information do people seek, and what are they willing to share as they jointly convey attention in today's VOs and distributed collaborations? (2) How does the relationship between gathering and display impact people's task performance, social relationships with others, their use of awareness information, and their attitudes toward privacy and sharing? (3) How do we integrate asynchronous and synchronous attention behaviors? This work builds on research in the area of interpersonal awareness and fostering interaction in geographically distributed groups. It makes several contributions: (1) developing and testing a joint action framework for attention management in VOs, (2) examining joint attention management in synchronous and asynchronous activities, and (3) developing novel tools using next-generation technologies to facilitate analysis of attention management, such as eye and gesture tracking. This work will improve our ability to support more natural and effective collaboration in virtual organizations, which have been identified as critical to national competitiveness and can improve interaction with aging, disabled and otherwise isolated individuals. Computer-supported cooperative work and other forms of computer-mediated communication can benefit. Results will be incorporated into classroom learning activities, and work will be carried out by students from multiple behavioral and technical disciplines, thus drawing a broader population of students to the science and engineering disciplines.