Distance Matters Gary Olson & Judith Olson

Distance MattersGary Olson & Judith Olson Hy Loc Distance Matters

Outline • Collocated Work • Remote Work • Four Concepts base on Observation • Future Technology and Issues Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

“Distance is not only alive and well, it is in several essential respect immortal” - Olson & Olson Distance Matters

Collocated Work Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

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… Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

“Confusion and misunderstandings happens all the time. … However, participants working face to face seldom feel disoriented or without context.” - Olson & Olson Distance Matters

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 Collocated Key Characteristics Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

Collocated Results • Double the output per unit of staff time compared to the corporate average • Reduce total time to market by two thirds Distance Matters

Remote Work Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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… Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

Four Concepts Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 background • Appearance and behavior during interaction Distance Matters

Establishing Common Grounds Observe how Miss Dimple is trying to establish an perspective of what Chico knows. Distance Matters

Establishing Common Grounds • Establish and maintaining common grounds from whatever cues we have at the moment • Few cues result in difficulty in creating a common ground and more misunderstanding • Misinterpretations requires more work to repair • Cost of communication Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

Factors for Establishing & Maintaining Common Grounds Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

Main Point The more common grounds people can establish, the easier the communication, the greater the productivity. Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

Main Point Design work organization so that ambiguous, tightly couple work is collocated. Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

Main Point Advance technologies should be introduced in small steps. Distance Matters

Distance Work in the New Millennium Distance Matters

Distance work in the New Millennium Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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. Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

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 Distance Matters

Questions, comments… Distance Matters

Distance Matters Gary Olson & Judith Olson