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Distance Matters 1
Distance MattersGary Olson & Judith Olson
Hy Loc
Distance Matters 2
Outline
Collocated Work Remote Work Four Concepts base on Observation Future Technology and Issues
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The Death of Distance by Frances Cairncross
“Geography, borders, time zones—all are rapidly becoming irrelevant to the way we conduct our business and personal lives … .”
- 1997
“…new communications technologies are rapidly obliterating distance as a relevant factor in how we conduct our business and personal lives.”
- 2001
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“Distance is not only alive and well, it is in several essential respect immortal”
- Olson & Olson
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Collocated Work
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Collocated Work Defined Location
Coworkers’ workspaces are a short distance away from each other “Short” No greater than 30 meters
Common space Used for group interaction Maybe work related interaction or otherwise E.g. meeting rooms, lounges, hallways
Shared Artifacts Object used by all group member to facilitate work E.g. displays, files, references
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Collocated Work Defined
Maximally collocated Coworker shares workspace and perform a majority of
their task if not all in this workspace Group members would work in a large room together: “war
room” or “project room” Members may or may not have other office space Members can move to a corner or an un-owned cubicle to
work independently with minimal disturbance.
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Collocated Work Observed
Fluidity of participation Choice of working alone or spontaneously creating sub-groups within
the group Easy transition between sub-groups Fluidity is rated as very important to the timely completion of work
Awareness Able to instantly get peripheral information Overhearing conversation that you should be involved with and having
the option to participate Observing what others are doing and being aware of how long they’ve
worked on it Etc…
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Collocated Work Observed Spatiality of Human Interaction
Allow for reference by pointing to a specific artifact Deictic reference
“that component”, “this part”, “modification here” Engineers holding meeting in front of design mounted on a wall
Air board describing complex idea by drawing in the air by hand and referencing it
Spatial location of artifacts and members may contain information
E.g. ordering of a list of functionality represent their importance
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“Confusion and misunderstandings happens all the time. … However, participants working face to face seldom feel disoriented or without context.”
- Olson & Olson
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Collocated Key Characteristics
Rapid Feedback Quick correction when there are noticed misunderstanding
Multiple Channel Information flows from a person’s tone, facial expression, gestures,
postures Able to convey subtle or complex messages
Personal Information Background of the source/person is known, will provide context to the
message. Nuanced Information
Small differences of meaning can be conveyed Shared Local Context
Participant have similar situation (time of day, local events) Allows for easy socializing
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Collocated Key Characteristics
Informal Hall Time Impromptu interactions Provides for opportunistic information exchange and social bonding
Co-references Ease of establishing joint reference to objects Gaze and gesture help explains deictic terms
Individual controls Easily change focus of attention Able to quickly tell how all the participant is reacting to whatever is going on
Implicit Cues Cues of what is going on in the periphery Important Contextual information
Spatiality of reference People and work objects are located in space People and idea can be referred to spatially
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Collocated Results
Double the output per unit of staff time compared to the corporate average
Reduce total time to market by two thirds
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Remote Work
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Remote Work Coworkers are located in different location and
physically unreachable
Remote tools today Telephony Video and Audio Conferences
Meeting rooms and desktop Chat File Transfer Application Sharing Virtual reality
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Remote Tools Today – Issues
Quality of communication over audio and video conferences Who is talking? What is being referenced? Difficult to set up and control.
Using the wrong medium to communicate with each other Tacit acceptance of the communication shortcomings without actively
considering other communication tools
New behaviors emerge to compensate for communication shortcomings Discourse rules, turn taking protocol, etc…
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Remote Work – Communication Tools Failures Failure: No Motivation
People don’t want to share data because they work in an environment where they are compensated for their knowledge
Aids scientist fear of losing out on discovery Workers who are rewarded for what they know are reluctant to use
new tool to share information
Failure: Un-readiness for communication technology A group may not be ready for certain communication tools Result in confusion and eventual abandonment of tools.
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Four Concepts
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Four Concepts
Will help predict the future success and failures of future communication tools
Will help determine what future communication tools will and will not solve in the new millennium
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1. Common Grounds
Common Grounds: Knowledge that participants have in common, and
they are aware they have in common.
Common Grounds are established through: General knowledge about the person’s backgroundAppearance and behavior during interaction
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Establishing Common Grounds
Observe how Miss Dimple is trying to establish an perspective of what Chico knows.
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Establishing Common Grounds
Establish and maintaining common grounds from whatever cues we have at the momentFew cues result in difficulty in creating a common
ground and more misunderstandingMisinterpretations requires more work to repair
Cost of communication
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Factors for Establishing & Maintaining Common Grounds Co-presence: Same physical enviroment Visibility: visible to each other Audibility: speech Contemporality: message receive without delay Simultaneity: both participant can send and receive Sequentiality: turns cannot get out of sequence Reviewability: able to review other’s messages Revisability: can revise messages before they are sent
- Clark & Brennan
The more factors a communication tool has the easier it is to construct common grounds with it.
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Factors for Establishing & Maintaining Common Grounds
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Common Grounds: Collocation Vs. Remote work Collocated Work
When teams are fully collocated, it is relatively easy to establish common grounds
Share culture, local context
Remote Work Experience difficulty establishing common grounds
Difficulty telling who is speaking if you do not know them well Off hand reference to local events unfamiliar to remote participant makes
them feel even more remote Lack awareness of coworkers’ mental state
People who have established a lot of common ground can communicate well even over a limiting medium
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Main Point
The more common grounds people can establish, the easier the communication, the greater the productivity.
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2. Coupling in Work
Coupling: the extent and kind of communication required by the work.
Tightly coupled work requires frequent, complex communication among the group members Ambiguous work
Loosely couple work requires either less frequent or less complicated interaction. Routine work, fewer dependencies Common Grounds on what needs to be done
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Coupling Characteristics
The greater the number of participants for a task, the more likely all aspect of the task are ambiguous. Common grounds between all the participants is very small
Task that are ambiguous is tightly couple until clarification is achieved.
E.g. Collaborative Design task is tightly coupled, while running a clearly define test suite is loosely coupled
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Main Point
Design work organization so that ambiguous, tightly couple work is collocated.
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3. Collaboration Readiness
Using shared technology assumes that the coworkers need to share information and are rewarded for it.
Collaboration will fail unless it aligns with the incentive structure.
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Main Point
One should not attempt to introduce groupware and remote technologies in organizations and communities that do not have a culture for sharing and collaboration
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4. Technology Readiness
Some organizations’ habits and infrastructure are not ready for adoption of appropriate technologies for distance work.
How organization may not be ready Poor alignment of technology support
How to implement email communication when the majority of people have no PC.
existing patterns of everyday usage If the organization do not document because it hinders their task data
digitally certainly means they are not ready for a shared tool dealing with digital documents.
Requirements/prerequisites for a new technology Organization that have not adopt email, will not be ready adopter of
NetMeetings
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Technology Readiness Ordering
Failures often results from attempts to introduce technologies in the lower half of the list to organization that are not yet comfortable with technologies in the upper of the list.
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Main Point
Advance technologies should be introduced in small steps.
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Distance Work in the New Millennium
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Distance work in the New Millennium
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Ways Communication Technology can be better than Collocation. Although face-to-face interaction is a good comparison for future tools, it is not the
golden rule Distance tool may have properties that are better than face-to-face interaction.
Asynchronous nature of computationally-mediated interaction Sometime people do not have overlapping time to have extended discussions
Discussion Board
Anonymity People are sometime more truthful anonymous than face-to-face
Avatars, screen names
Revisability and Reviewability Revising you message before you send it Reviewing other people’s message for clarification
“Beyond Being There” - Hollan & Stornetta
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Distance work in the New Millennium
Several key elements of interactivity will be resistant to technological support
Common grounds and context Differing time zone Cultural differences
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Common grounds and Context People who are born and reside in entirely different countries will need
extra efforts to establish common grounds Local politics Sport events Holidays Social Interchange with locals
Technology can provide some contextual information, but it cannot possibly provide information about everything that affects team members The bad weather at a remote location cause all the team member there to be
late. Street construction cause the power to shutdown, disconnecting the remote site.
Common grounds help develop trust which have been shown to improve efficiency and reliability in teams.
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Different Time Zone
The more time zone you cross, the less the time when people are at work at the same time.
Short overlapping work time cause people to rush work during overlap and delay decision making during non-overlap Reducing productivity
During overlap, people at different site is at different part of the day. Sleepy morning workers in one site Alert late afternoon workers in another
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Culture Possibly the single biggest factor that global teams need to
address is cultural differences.
Teams where participants are from two or more countries have frequent misunderstandings resulting from cultural differences.
Examples of cultural differences American culture is very task oriented, while Europeans and Asians
values personal relationships and will spend whole meetings socializing Relationship between managers and direct reports
European and Asian workers respect authority and do not require persuasion when given task
In the U.S. there exist less distance between manager and direct report, they communicates freely
Ways feedback is given
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Attempts to overcome culture barriers
Global companies are beginning to be populate by culturally knowledgeable personnel
During intense interaction or heat of discussion it is very hard to remain culturally considerate People tend to revert back to the natural cultural habits
Sensitivity to cultural difference will always take more effort, not matter the technology Cost of remote work
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Examples of Failures to consider context, time zone and culture
Tech talk scheduled between an American professor in the Netherlands with American Executives Scheduled for 7 p.m. Dutch time (1 p.m. US) on Friday,
May 5
Company schedule routine conference between US and French site Meeting held 7:30 am U.S. time (late afternoon French
time) every Friday
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Conclusion
“Although we will be able to bridge some of the distance and make communication richer for remote work than it is today, distance still matters.”
- Olson & Olson
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Questions, comments…