Hooray! I can finally say this project has reached its conclusion. The project findings are summarized below. The complete project report can be found here, and corresponding presentation here.
The two main goals of the current project were to: (1) Identify the consequences and challenges of mobile work – particularly with respect one's ability to stay up-to-date (i.e., in sync) and connected (i.e., in touch) with his or her distant colleagues; and, (2) come up with potential design solutions to address these challenges.
Project Goal 1: Determine the role of in sync and in touch in mobile professionals' lives
Interviews were initially undertaken with a group of mobile workers in order to determine how much they valued staying in sync and in touch with their distant colleagues. Because all of those interviewed worked primarily in distributed project teams, they all spoke of expending a great deal of effort in order to nurture a sense of connectedness and stay up-to-date with their immediate, project-level colleagues. To that end, they generally traveled in order to hold regular face-to-face meetings with their team members, or were in daily contact with them by either phone or email (or both). So much effort was poured into activities that supported staying in sync and in touch with their project level colleagues that all those interviewed expressed satisfaction with the outcome of these efforts. In fact, staying in sync and in touch with one's project team was so important that it came to be considered a primary need of the mobile workers interviewed.
However, breakdowns occurred when they tried to use the same tools and practices for staying in sync and in touch with their project teams, as with the colleagues in their departments or wider organizations. The main problem arose when they used what one might consider traditional office tools – i.e., principally face-to-face meetings, phone and email – to infiltrate this second, much more dispersed and loosely connected group of individuals. Thus, these individuals came to be referred to as Traditionalists, namely because their choice of communication tools most closely resembled that of traditional, co-located office workers. They were also much more conservative in their approach to communication than a second group of highly connected networkers that was interviewed. To an extent, staying in sync and in touch with one's departmental or organizational level colleagues was considered to be of value to the Traditionalists (although not to the same degree as interactions with one's project level peers);communications at this level were thus designated secondary needs.
The problems for the Traditionalists were found to have two distinct levels. First, breakdowns in their ability nurture connections with their departmental/organizational level peers had dire consequences for the relationships that they had with those individuals. Some Traditionalists expressed a sense of confusion over what others in their department were currently working on; in extreme cases, the identities of some departmental peers were not even known. So, not only were there potential direct implications of not being able to stay in sync and in touch with one's departmental peers, but there were found to be indirect implications that had potentially detrimental repercussions for their project work, as well.
Project Goal 2: Come up with solutions to the problems faced by mobile professionals
As mentioned above, a second set of interviews was conducted with highly connected professionals. Findings from these interviews were used as inspiration for coming up with solutions to address the problems of the Traditionalists in keeping in sync and in touch with their departmental- and/or organizational-level colleagues. These were: (1) integrating the use of information filters (e.g., RSS feeds) into any solution; and (2) supporting one-to-many or many-to-many communication.
Next, a set of design six requirements (see the table below) was used to provide a foundation for some possible concept solutions.
After a series of analyses, and a couple of iterative design cycles, three concepts were developed into short illustrative movies; these were: (1) Ping, (2) Status Sharing tools, and (3) Bulletin Board. All three movies can be viewed here.
The next section covers the extent to which each of
the three concepts met the design requirements, according to findings from the
evaluations.
Assessment of the validity of the concepts…
With respect to the requirements
Comparison of the concepts to the requirements, including how those requirements were met (at least in part); * = This item is starred because it was the tool that was perceived to require the most effort by all those who took part in the final evaluation; however, results indicated that the degree of effort required was still perceived to be low, on average.
As shown in the table above (which is best viewed in its own browser window), it can be argued that – where applicable – all of the tools met all of the requirements. It is important to note that – because the solutions presented were early-stage concepts – it would be hard to concretely assess the effort involved in setting up each tool. Moreover, the evaluations were mainly meant to tap the extent to which the users valued the concepts themselves (e.g., did they mind sharing information regarding their activities and whereabouts, and similarly, did they also like to have access to this information from their contacts?) Therefore, a second requirement dealing with the need for a low-effort set-up of the system was left out of the table.
With respect to staying in sync
Both those interviewed and those who filled out the online evaluation indicated that the Bulletin Board and Status Sharing tools had the potential to help them stay up-to-date with their colleagues, to an equal degree. Ping was also thought to be a useful in sync tool, albeit to a slightly lesser degree than the other two concepts.
With respect to staying in touch
Although all of the concepts were considered to be adequate in touch tools, the Bulletin Board was considered to be the tool that was best suited to this goal. Both those interviewed and those who took the online evaluation noted its potential for sharing more personally-relevant information.
General reception of the concepts
According to the final evaluation, those interviewed appeared to prefer the Ping concept overall. With respect to the online evaluation, both Ping and the Status Sharing tool came out on top. Although these tools were not perceived to be the best tools – hands down – for staying either in sync or in touch, they were considered to be the easiest to use; were thought to have the lowest cost-to-benefit ratios; and, would require the least amount of time. Thus, it can be argued that requirement #3 (above) was given the most weight when assessing these concepts. Interestingly, the concept that was considered to have the most combined in sync and in touch potential – that is, the Bulletin Board – was the least appreciated overall, across all evaluations.
Future directions
Based on findings from the evaluations, it was suggested that either the Ping or Status Sharing tool be considered for further development. In the end, the problems faced by the Traditionalists can be thought of as large – but given their preference for simple, low-effort tools it is concluded that only very modest solutions will be adopted readily. The potential benefit in providing modest solutions, however, is that they might lower the threshold sufficiently enough so that the Traditionalists can meet both primary and secondary needs effectively.
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