Distance matters

Abstract

Giant strides in information technology at the turn of the century may have unleashed unreachable goals. With the invention of groupware, people expect to communicate easily with each other and accomplish difficult work even though they are remotely located or rarely overlap in time. Major corporations launch global teams, expecting that technology will make "virtual collocation" possible. Federal research money encourages global science through the establishment of "collaboratories." We review over 10 years of field and laboratory investigations of collocated and noncollocated synchronous group collaborations. In particular, we compare collocated work with remote work as it is possible today and comment on the promise of remote work tomorrow. We focus on the sociotechnical conditions required for effective distance work and bring together the results with four key concepts: common ground, coupling of work, collaboration readiness, and collaboration technology readiness. Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters.

References

1. Allen, T. J. (1977). Managing the flow of technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2. Auramaki, E., Robinson, M., Aaltonen, A., Kovalainen, M., Liinamaa, A., & Tunna-vaiska, T. (1996). Paperwork at 78 kph. Proceedings of the CSCW'96 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 370-379. New York: ACM.
3. Boyle, E., Anderson, A., & Newlands, A. (1994). The effects of visibility on dialogue performance in a cooperative problem solving task. Language and Speech, 37, 1-20.
4. Bradach, J. L., & Eccles, R. G. (1989). Price, authority and trust: From ideal types to plural forms. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 97-118.
5. Bradner, E., Kellogg, W. A., & Erickson, T. (1999). The adoption and use of babble: A field study of chat in the workplace. Proceedings of the ECSCW'99 European Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference, 139-158. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
6. Browning, E. S. (1994, May 3). Side by side: Computer chip project brings rivals together, but the cultures clash; Foreign work habits get in the way of creative leaps, hobbling joint research. Softball is not the answer. The Wall Street Journal, p. A1.
7. Cairncross, F. (1997). The death of distance: How the communications revolution will change our lives. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
8. Churchill, E., & Bly, S. (1999a). It's all in the words: Supporting work activities with lightweight tools. Proceedings of the GROUP'99, 40-49. New York: ACM.
9. Churchill, E., & Bly, S. (1999b). Virtual environments at work: Ongoing use of MUDs in the workplace. Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Work Activities Coordination and Collaboration, 99-108. New York: ACM.
10. Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
11. Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127-149). Washington, DC: APA.
12. Covi, L. M., Olson, J. S., & Rocco, E. (1998). A room of your own: What do we learn about support of teamwork from assessing teams in dedicated project rooms? In N. Streitz, S. Konomi, & H. J. Burkhardt (Eds.), Cooperative buildings (pp. 53-65). Amsterdam: Springer-Verlag.
13. Cummings, L. L., & Bromiley, P. (1996). The organizational trust inventory (OTI): Development and validation. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 302-330). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
14. Daft, R., & Lengel, R. (1984). Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organizational design. In B. Straw & L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (pp. 191-223). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
15. Daly-Jones, O., Monk, A., & Watts, L. (1998). Some advantages of video conferencing over high-quality audio conferencing: Fluency and awareness of attentional focus. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 49, 21-58.
16. Dourish, P., Adler, A., Bellotti, V., & Henderson, A. (1996). Your place or mine? Learning from long-term use of audio-video communication. Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 5 (1), 33-62.
17. Dourish, P., & Bly, S. (1992). Portholes: Supporting awareness in a distributed group. Proceedings of the 1992 Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 541-547. New York: ACM.
18. Farmer, S. M., & Hyatt, C.W. (1994). Effects of task language demand and task complexity on computer-mediated work groups. Small Group Research, 25, 331-336.
19. Finholt, T. A., & Olson, G. M. (1997). From laboratories to collaboratories: A new organizational form for scientific collaboration. Psychological Science, 8(1), 28-35.
20. Finn, K., Sellen, A., & Wilbur, S. (Eds.). (1997). Video mediated communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
21. Fish, R. S., Kraut, R. E., Root, R., & Rice, R. E. (1993). Video as a technology for informal communication. Communications of the ACM, 36, 8-61.
22. Gaver, W. W., Moran, T., MacLean, A., Lovstrand, L., Dourish, P., Carter, K. A., & Buxton, W. (1992). Realizing a video environment: Euro PARC's RAVE system. Proceedings of the CHI'92 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 27-35. New York: ACM.
23. Grayson, D., & Coventry, L. (1998). The effects of visual proxemic information in video mediated communication. SIGCHI Bulletin, 30 (3), 30-39.
24. Hall, E. T. (1966) The hidden dimension. New York: Doubleday.
25. Hall, E. T., & Hall, M. R. (1990). Understanding cultural differences: Germans, French and Americans. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.
26. Hampden-Turner, C., & Trompenaars, F. (1993). The seven cultures of capitalism. London: Piatkus.
27. Handy, C. (1995) Trust and the virtual organization. Harvard Business Review, 73 (3), 40-50.
28. Heath, C., & Luff, P. (1991). Disembodied conduct: Communication through video in a multi-media office environment. Proceedings of the CHI'91 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 99-103. New York: ACM.
29. Herbsleb, J. D., Klein, H., Olson, G. M., Brunner, H., Olson, J. S., & Harding, J. (1995). Object-oriented analysis and design in software project teams. Human-Computer Interaction, 10, 249-292.
30. Herbsleb, J. D., & Kuwana, E. (1993). Preserving knowledge in design projects: What designers need to know. Proceedings of the INTERCHI'93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 7-14. New York: ACM.
31. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
32. Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill.
33. Hollan, J., & Stornetta, S. (1992). Beyond being there. Proceedings of the CHI'92 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 119-125. New York: ACM.
34. Hymes, C. M., & Olson, G. M. (1992). Unblocking brainstorming through use of a simple group editor. Proceedings of the CSCW'92 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 99-106. New York: ACM.
35. Isaacs, E. A., & Tang, J. C. (1994). What video can and cannot do for collaboration: A case study. Multimedia Systems, 2, 63-73.
36. Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Leidner, D. E. (1999). Communication and trust in global teams. Organizational Science, 10, 791-815.
37. Kovalainen, M., Robinson, M., & Auramaki, E. (1998). Diaries at work. Proceedings of the CSCW'98 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 49-58. New York: ACM.
38. Krauss, R., & Bricker, P. (1967). Effects of transmission delay and access delay on the efficiency of verbal communication. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 41, 286-292.
39. Kraut, R. E., Egido, C., & Galegher, J. (1990). Patterns of contact and communication in scientific research collaborations. In J. Galegher, R. E. Kraut, & C. Egido (Eds.), Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of cooperative work (pp. 149-171). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
40. Lehner, V. D., & DeFanti, T. A. (1997). Distributed virtual reality: Supporting remote collaboration in vehicle design. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, 17 (2), 13-17.
41. Lewis, J. D., & Weigert, A., (1985). Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63, 967-985.
42. Mantei, M. M., Baecker, R. M., Sellen, A. J., Buxton, W. A. S., & Mulligan, T. (1991). Experiences in the use of a media space. Proceedings of the 1991 Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 203-208. New York: ACM.
43. Mark, G., Grudin, J., & Poltrock, S. E. (1999). Meeting at the desktop: An empirical study of virtually collocated teams. Proceedings of the ECSCW'99, 159-178. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
44. Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734.
45. McDaniel, S. E., Olson, G. M., & McGee, J. C. (1996). Identifying and analyzing multiple threads in computer mediated and face-to-face conversations. Proceedings of the CSCW'96 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 39-47. New York: ACM.
46. McDaniel, S. E., Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (1994). Methods in search of a methodology-combining HCI and object orientation. Proceedings of the CHI'94 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 145-151. Boston, MA: ACM.
47. Mee, A. (1898). The pleasure telephone. The Strand Magazine, 16, 339-345.
48. Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. New York: Harper Collins.
49. Nardi, B. A., Kuchinsky, A., Whittaker, S., Leichner, R., & Schwarz, H. (1997). Video-as-data: Technical and social aspects of a collaborative multimedia application. In K. Finn, A. Sellen, & S. Wilbur (Eds.), Video mediated communication (pp. 487-518). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
50. Nohria, N., & Eccles, R. G. (1992). Face-to-face: Making network organizations work. In N. Nohria & R. G. Eccles (Eds.), Networks and organizations (pp. 288-308). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
51. O'Hara-Devereaux, M., & Johansen, R. (1994). Globalwork: Bridging distance, culture and time. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
52. Olson, G. M., Atkins, D. E., Clauer, R., Finholt, T. A., Jahanian, F., Killeen, T. L., Prakash, A., & Weymouth, T. (1998). The upper atmospheric research collaboratory. Interactions, 5(3), 48-55.
53. Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (1991). User centered design of collaboration technology. Journal of Organizational Computing, 1, 61-83.
54. Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (1995). The effectiveness of simple shared electronic workspaces. In S. Greenberg, S. Hayne, & R. Rada (Eds.), Real time group drawing and writing tools (pp. 105-126). London: McGraw-Hill.
55. Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (1997a). Making sense of the findings: Common vocabulary leads to the synthesis necessary for theory building. In K. Finn, A. Sellen, & S. Wilbur (Eds.), Video mediated communication (pp. 75-92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
56. Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (1997b). Research in computer supported cooperative work. In T. Landauer & M. Helander (Eds.), Handbook of human computer interaction (pp. 1433-1457). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
57. Olson, G. M., Olson, J. S., Carter, M., & Storrøøsten, M. (1992). Small group design meetings: An analysis of collaboration. Human-Computer Interaction, 7, 347-374.
58. Olson, G. M., Olson, J. S., Storrøsten, M., Carter, M., Herbsleb, J., & Rueter, H. (1995). The structure of activity during design meetings. In J. Carroll & T. Moran (Eds.), Design rationale: Concepts, techniques, and use (pp. 217-239). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
59. Olson, J. S., Covi, L., Rocco, E., Miller, W. J., & Allie, P. (1998). A room of your own: What would it take to help remote groups work as well as collocated groups? Proceedings of the CHI'98 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 279-280. New York: ACM.
60. Olson, J. S., & Olson, G. M. (1999). Computer-supported cooperative work. In F. Durso (Ed.), Handbook of applied cognition (pp. 409-442). New York: Wiley.
61. Olson, J. S., Olson, G. M., & Meader, D. K. (1995). What mix of video and audio is useful for remote real-time work? Proceedings of the CHI'95 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 362-368. Denver, CO: ACM.
62. Olson, J. S., Olson, G. M., & Meader, D. (1997). Face-to-face group work compared to remote group work with and without video. In K. Finn, A. Sellen, & S. Wilbur (Eds.), Video mediated communication (pp. 152-172). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
63. Olson, J. S., Olson, G. M., Storrøsten, M., & Carter, M. (1992). How a group-editor changes the character of a design meeting as well as its outcome. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 91-98. New York: ACM.
64. Olson, J. S., Olson, G. M., Storrøsten, M., & Carter, M. (1993). Group work close up: A comparison of the group design process with and without a simple group editor. ACM: Transactions on Information Systems, 11, 321-348.
65. Olson, J. S., & Teasley, S. (1996). Groupware in the wild: Lessons learned from a year of virtual collocation. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 419-427. New York: ACM.
66. Olson, M. H., & Bly, S. A. (1991). The Portland experience: A report on a distributed research group. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34, 211-228.
67. Orlikowski,W. (1992). Learning from notes: Organizational issues in groupware implementation. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 362-369. New York: ACM.
68. Pool, I. S. (Ed.). (1977). The social impact of the telephone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
69. Riez, R. R., & Klemmer, E. T. (1963). Subjective evaluation of delay and echo suppressers in telephone communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 4, 2919-2942.
70. Rocco, E. (1998). Trust breaks down in electronic contexts but can be repaired by some initial face-to-face contact. Proceedings of the CHI'98 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 496-502. New York: ACM.
71. Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: Wiley.
72. Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
73. Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1994). Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure: Complex problems in design and access for large-scale collaborative systems. Proceedings of the CSCW'94 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 253-264. New York: ACM.
74. Tang, J. C., & Isaacs, E. A. (1993). Why do users like video? Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1, 163-196.
75. Tang, J. C., Isaacs, E. A., & Rua, M. (1994). Supporting distributed groups with a montage of lightweight interactions. Proceeding of the CSCW'94 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 23-34. New York: ACM.
76. Trompenaars, F., & Hampden-Turner, C. (1998). Riding the waves of culture: Understanding cultural diversity in business. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
77. van Alstyne, M., & Brynjolfsson, E. (1996). Widening access and narrowing focus: Could the Internet balkanize science? Science, 274, 1479-1480.
78. Veinott, E., Olson, J. S., Olson, G. M., & Fu, X. (1999). Video helps remote work: Speakers who need to negotiate common ground benefit from seeing each other. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 302-309. New York: ACM.
79. Watts, L. A., & Monk, A. F. (1998). Reasoning about tasks, activities and technology to support collaboration. Ergonomics, 41, 1583-1606.
80. Weick, K. E. (1976). The social psychology of organizing. New York: Random House. Whittaker, S., & Schwarz, H. (1995). Back to the future: Pen and paper technology supports complex group coordination. Proceedings of the CHI'95 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 495-502. New York: ACM.
81. Williams, G. (1997). Task conflict and language differences: Opportunities for videoconferencing. Proceedings of the ECSCW'97, 97-108. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
82. Zand, D. E. (1972). Trust and managerial problem solving. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 229-239.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Modeling and simulation

    • Model development and analysis

      • Model verification and validation

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)