Effect of Communication Medium on Virtual Design Teams' Workload

Abstract

The movement toward distributed collaborative work groups or virtual teams by organizations has initiated a myriad of questions specific to human factors research. Distributed team members, linked through technological interfaces, may vary in location, discipline, company loyalties, and culture. While virtual teams are necessary in this environment of time compression, distributed resources, increasing dependence on knowledge-based input, and the integration of information and telecommunication technologies, there is an increasing need to understand factors influencing distributed work group performance. Communication research has demonstrated that as communication signals are narrowed by medium restraints, the communication process changes and group members adopt new communication strategies. This study hypothesized that a group's mental workload would increase as the communication bandwidth was constrained. Results show that audio and video groups did not perceive significantly different overall workloads; however, both exceeded that of face-to-face groups.