ABSTRACT
Remote meetings have become more prevalent due to the COVID-19 pandemic and technology that facilitates remote work. There is limited research on the effect of remote meetings on group performance and the goal of this study is to identify how distractions affect the individual and group creativity in remote work meetings. A virtual study was conducted where groups of four people participated in divergent and convergent thinking tasks. One group member was assigned an additional non-meeting task while another was assigned as a scribe. Measures of creative performance (e.g., uniqueness of idea) of the distracted members and the group were analyzed. The results show that the distractee contributed (on average) less time and ideas when compared to monotaskers and those assigned as a scribe. The study highlights ways that remote meetings can facilitate creativity. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
To better ground technical (systems) investigation and interaction design of cross-device experiences, we contribute an in-depth survey of existing multi-device practices, including fragmented workflows across devices and the way people physically organize and configure their workspaces to support such activity. Further, this survey documents a historically significant moment of transition to a new future of remote work, an existing trend dramatically accelerated by the abrupt switch to work-from-home (and having to contend with the demands of home-at-work) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 97 participants, and collected photographs of home setups and open-ended answers to 50 questions categorized in 5 themes. We characterize the wide range of multi-device physical configurations and identify five usage patterns, including: partitioning tasks, integrating multi-device usage, cloning tasks to other devices, expanding tasks and inputs to multiple devices, and migrating between devices. Our analysis also sheds light on the benefits and challenges people face when their workflow is fragmented across multiple devices. These insights have implications for the design of multi-device experiences that support people's fragmented workflows. © 2022 Owner/Author.