Do you see that I see?

Abstract

Informal interactions are a key element of group work, and many theoretical frameworks and systems have been developed to understand and support these conversations in distributed workgroups. In particular, systems used in several recent experiments provided information about others' current activities so that their availability for conversation could be assessed, and interruptions could be timed strategically. One issue with these experimental systems, though, is that many do not notify the observed party that these observations are taking place. There is reason to believe that such notification could be valuable to users, and that it could alter observers' behavior. Moreover, factors such as the perceived urgency of the interruption could affect willingness to violate social norms in gathering information. We report on an experiment assessing the impact of perceived visibility and task urgency on awareness checking behavior. Results suggest that people check more often when they believe their partners do not know they are checking, and more often when the task is time-constrained than when it is not.

Overcoming the “Ideology of Openness”: Probing the Affordances of Social Media for Organizational Knowledge Sharing

“…In this sense, social media may be unique in allowing employees more latitude for strategic behaviors in addition to openness. While prior research on technology use has emphasized its strategic affordances (Birnholtz, Bi, & Fussell, 2012;O'Sullivan, 2000;Walther, 2007), it has not studied social media per se but rather communication media in general, including e-mail, instant messaging, and group collaboration tools. Social media is often heralded for the greater degree of openness and connection it provides users.…”

An integrated computer-based procedure for teamwork in digital nuclear power plants

“…Because shared information about team members' status exhibited a general positive effect in improving team performance across fields (Mathieu et al 2000;Mesmer-Magnus and DeChurch 2009;Roth, Multer, and Raslear 2006), supplying necessary team member-related information to each other with the information system seems a natural and attractive option to enhance teamwork. Such an intuition leads to a few attempts to develop awareness displays for presenting team members' mission status, workload and availability (Scott, Sasangohar, and Dabbish and Kraut 2008;Birnholtz, Bi, and Fussell 2012). But the number of such studies is small, and the implementation is limited to distributed collaborative systems.…”

Intercultural Awareness: Cultural and Relational Effects on Awareness Information Gathering Behavior

“…Dabbish and Kraut (Dabbish & Kraut, 2004) found that awareness information is used to time the interruption only when the collaborators are motivated on a team basis. Birnholtz et al (Birnholtz, Bi, & Fussell, 2012) noted that visibility of those awareness checks has an impact in that when people believe their awareness information gathering behavior can been seen by their collaborator, whose information is being gathered, they conduct such checks significantly less frequently than when they believe people cannot see them; they believed it was because they are concerned about the social appropriateness or possible negative consequences (e.g., annoyingness).…”

“…As Tang (J. Tang, 2007) notes in his review, a key aspect of negotiating mutual availability is having a multi-staged "approach" that allows people to first check on others without necessarily interrupting them, and then gradually allow their interest in interaction to become more salient. Birnholtz et al (Birnholtz et al, 2012) build on this, noting that there is potential utility in allowing those being checked on to see (and thus potentially respond to) all awareness checks. This, in principle, allows for a more natural negotiation of mutual attention in that all acts of gathering can be seen and responded to (see Birnholtz et al, 2012;Birnholtz, Schultz, Lepage, & Gutwin, 2011, for a much more detailed discussion of these issues).…”

“…Birnholtz et al (Birnholtz et al, 2012) build on this, noting that there is potential utility in allowing those being checked on to see (and thus potentially respond to) all awareness checks. This, in principle, allows for a more natural negotiation of mutual attention in that all acts of gathering can be seen and responded to (see Birnholtz et al, 2012;Birnholtz, Schultz, Lepage, & Gutwin, 2011, for a much more detailed discussion of these issues).…”