CHI 2006 Proceedings • Computer-Mediated Communication
April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada
‘Collocation Blindness’ in Partially Distributed Groups: Is There a Downside to Being Collocated? Nathan Bos1, Judith S. Olson1, Ning Nan1, N. Sadat Shami2, Susannah Hoch3, Erik Johnston1 1
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA {nbos, jsolson, nnan, sushoch, erikwj}@umich.edu 2 Cornell University
[email protected] 3 Draper Laboratory
[email protected] ABSTRACT
and organizational interfaces, collaborative computing. K.4.1. Public policy issues, Privacy.
Under what circumstances might a group member be better off as a long-distance participant rather than collocated? We ran a set of experiments to study how partially-distributed groups collaborate when skill sets are unequally distributed. Partially distributed groups are those where some collaborators work together in the same space (collocated) and some work remotely using computer-mediated communications. Previous experiments had shown that these groups tend to form semi-autonomous ‘in-groups’. In this set of experiments the configuration was changed so that some player skills were located only in the collocated space, and some were located only remotely, creating local surplus of some skills and local scarcity of others in the collocated room. Players whose skills were locally in surplus performed significantly worse. They experienced ‘collocation blindness’ and failed to pay enough attention to collaborators outside of the room. In contrast, the remote players whose skills were scarce inside the collocated room did particularly well because they charged a high price for their skills.
INTRODUCTION
Saul Steinberg’s famous illustration, “The View from 9th Avenue” [1] pokes fun at the myopic worldview of New Yorkers. The drawing shows plentiful details of New York City up to the Hudson river, but outside of the city detail is increasing sparse—New Jersey is a featureless strip of land, the rest of the continent mostly blank space with a few patches such as ‘Chicago’ and ‘Mexico’ labeled. The satirical point is that the rich cultural landscape of New York can, for its citizens, be so engrossing as to make everything else disappear into the horizon, leading to a kind of ‘blindness’ towards the rest of the world. This phenomenon (which New Yorkers may or may not consider a problem) is not unique to citizens of great cities. Our recent experiments with partially distributed teams show a similar phenomenon among collocated coworkers, whose attention to collaboration happening among local coworkers leads to a kind of blindness toward coworkers located further away.
Author Keywords
Distributed work, computer-mediated communication, collocation, co-location, telework, telecommuting, virtual teams, collaboration networks
Partially-distributed groups are those that have some of their members collocated, and some joining in from further away using computer-mediated communications. By ‘collocated’ we mean collaborators who have frequent opportunity for face-to-face communication. Collocation presents many advantages for collaboration. Face-to-face conversations aid in building trust between collaborators, make breaches of trust less frequent and also easier to repair [2]. Kraut, Egido and Galegher [3] found that researchers at a prominent research lab whose offices were within 30 meters of each other were more likely to co-author papers together, presumably because they had more informal opportunities to share interests and brainstorm ideas for projects. Teasley, Covi, Krishnan and Olson, [4] found that software developers who were ‘radically collocated’, i.e.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.1.2 User/Machine Systems, Human factors. H.5.3 Group Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CHI 2006, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Copyright 2006 ACM 1-59593-178-3/06/0004...$5.00.
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worked everyday in the same large open office space, developed code at a rate significantly higher than their company norm. These radically collocated co-workers used frequent informal consultations with each other rather than formal meetings, and used wall space and whiteboards instead of group emails. These studies and others show how frequent communication, ease of access, and a high-trust atmosphere can be powerful catalysts for team collaboration.
April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada
Interestingly, in our previous experiments there has been little or no performance difference between the collocated and remote individuals. Collocators have some advantage in being able to negotiate and coordinate more quickly and share game information more readily. But remote players have counterbalancing advantages such as their ability to concentrate more easily outside of the noisy collocated room. What about when team members need the particular skills of players in a different location? In our previous experiments the collocated and remote groups could afford to ignore each other because each was self-sufficient, containing all the available skills. But such perfectly balanced teams are unrealistically simple. What would happen to the in-groups if the skills were unequally distributed? Would the collocator trading bias be lessened? Who might benefit, and who might be hurt? We devised an experimental configuration, described below, which creates local scarcity of one type of skill in a collocated setting, and a local surplus of another skill in the same collocated room. Analysis of the resulting collaboration patterns will yield insight into the dynamics of partially distributed groups.
Remote group members have very different communication needs than do collocated coworkers. Distributed groups cannot rely on informal contact, such as accidentally running into each other in the hallway, to build relationships and coordinate work. To succeed, virtual collaborations must use scheduled meetings, engage in intentional team-building and relationship-management, and disciplined habits of responsiveness and availability [5, 6, 7]. What happens when collocated and distributed groups are combined? Partially distributed groups are increasingly common: A 1996 survey [8] of several large corporations found that 56% of project teams had members from multiples sites, but of these only 9% were pure virtual teams. Many work teams consist of a partial team in one office joined by a few consultants or experts at a distance, or a few members who frequently telecommute. Typical corporate meetings feature one or two participants joining by phone or video as often as not. And in some cases the distance or time-zone disconnects are great enough that most communication happens asynchronously, usually by email or other text-mediated tool.
METHOD The Shape Factory simulation
We use an experimental task called Shape Factory [12] to reproduce some of the dynamics of interdependent work group in a laboratory setting. Ten players participate in each session, five sitting around a table in the same room (the collocated players) and five working from separate rooms (the remote players). Players each work on an individual laptop, where they use a Web interface to play the game and to communicate with other players. The game supports text-based messaging between players. Players can send simple messages, and can attach text notes to all official game transactions (buying selling, and negotiating for shapes.) Collocated players can also communicate verbally with each other instead of or in addition to using the game messaging system. The game system must be used for all official transactions, whether or not text messages are included with them.
Collaboration patterns in partially-distributed groups
There has only been a small amount of previous research on partially-distributed groups, but what there is suggests that these configurations have some unique problems. Herbsleb, et al. [9] found that software modification requests were performed more slowly when coworkers were separated by distance as compared to collocated members of the same group. Pool [10] found that individuals with more communication access to each other tend to favor each other in resource distribution. Belanger [11] found that teleworkers tend to talk to each other more frequently than to those permanently collocated in their team’s office.
A Shape Factory game consists of five rounds, with the first round taking 20 minutes and the rest 15 minutes each. In each round of the game, each player has the opportunity to try to fill three ‘orders’ consisting of strings of shapes. To fill all three orders available in a round would require the player to obtain eight shapes total. These shapes can be obtained by buying them from other players. Orders represent ‘projects’ that a partially distributed group could take on, and the shapes represent different skills necessary to complete projects.
Our research group’s previous experimental work [12] found that collocated and remote group members formed strong trading in-groups, such that the collocators collaborated much more frequently with each other, and remote players with each other. These in-groups were created by favoritism shown among collocators, and reinforced by differing communication styles—collocators communicated verbally and tended to ignore text messages while remote players relied on text messaging for both coordination and relationship-building. [13].
Each player in Shape Factory can cheaply produce one of five shapes-- circles, squares, triangles, X’s, or diamonds, (giving each player one specialty ‘skill’). For simplicity, players’ orders never contain their own specialty shape, so
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CHI 2006 Proceedings • Computer-Mediated Communication
they never use these shapes themselves. Players can sell these shapes to other players who need them. At the same time players are trying to buy the specialty shapes that they need for their own orders from other players.
This paper reports on a variation we call the ‘Doubles’ configuration. Both producers of one shape were located together in the collocated room, and both producers of another shape were remote, as shown in Figure 1. (The specific shapes that were doubled changed each session. Players did not necessarily sit in the arrangement shown in the figure.)
Each player can only produce and sell six of their specialty shapes. This creates scarcity in the game, because each player would ideally like to purchase eight shapes to fill all three of their orders for that round. Players can also make their non-specialty shapes, but the cost of these is high enough that they can only make a profit by buying at least part of an order for less than they could make it themselves. Players are free to fill any and all orders they can, and buy and sell shapes with whomever they choose during each round. Players have two ways to make money in the game: by selling their specialty shapes to other players at a profit, and by assembling orders (strings of shapes) out of shapes purchased from other players.
Collocators
Each shape is produced by two players. Players are known by their color (e.g. Red Triangle and Green Triangle) but color is irrelevant when filling orders, so a player needing triangles could go to either Red or Green as a supplier.
Choice among collaborators – Since each shape is made by two players, each buyer has a choice of sellers to approach.
3.
Self-management – there is no formal hierarchy and players have considerable autonomy in deciding what orders to fill and what collaborators to work with.
4.
Unequal communication opportunities – collocated players can communicate verbally as well as through text messaging.
5.
Resource pressure – there are not enough shapes to fill every order.
6.
Time pressure – limited time in rounds creates some urgency in collaborations.
Remotes
Remote Doubles
We will refer to the four situations or player types as they are labeled in Figure 1: Collocators, Collocated Doubles, Remotes, and Remote Doubles.
Interdependent coworkers – Shape Factory players’ specialty shapes correspond to specialty skills, and transactions are the collaborations by which skills are exchanged.
2.
Collocated Doubles
Figure 1. Shape Factory Doubles configuration
The game is intended to mimic these dynamics of realworld workplace collaborations: 1.
April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada
What kind of groups are these?
The Shape Factory task creates groups that are best described as collaboration networks, following Powell [14]. Shape Factory groups are not true teams, because each player has individual goals and works on individual projects. But these groups are also more than just a market. Previous analyses of this task have shown that successful Shape Factory players form and maintain reciprocal trading relationships with other players that go beyond what one would expect from an anonymous marketplace. As such, these groups fit exactly into Powell’s definition of a network as something more flexible than a hierarchy but more relationship-focused than a pure market. Even though Shape Factory groups are not true teams, discussion will describe some examples where the dynamics described in these experiments may be applicable to teams. Participants
A total of 130 participants served in the study. They were recruited from a recruiting email list, an ad in a university newspaper, and signs posted throughout a large university campus. Participants were paid $15 for completing the session plus a chance to win up to $10 based on performance. The average amount paid was $17. Fifty two percent were female, 97% were students, and the average age was 22. They had average of 14 years of education. Almost all of the participants (99%) stated that they had used computers, the Internet and email regularly for over three years.
The Doubles Configuration
In this set of experiments we created a different configuration of local and distant players than had been studied before. Previously, in the ‘baseline’ Shape Factory configuration we arranged it so that one of each specialty shape producer was in the collocated room, and the other of each shape was remote. This configuration made it possible for the collocated and remote groups to be somewhat selfsufficient although scarcity and variation in order composition did motivate some cross-trading.
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CHI 2006 Proceedings • Computer-Mediated Communication Game Interface
April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada
We performed post-hoc pairwise comparisons between the conditions using Least Squares Distance (LSD). There were significant differences between Collocators and Remote players (p
