Flexible Environments for Hybrid Collaboration: Redesigning Virtual Work Through the Four Orders of Design

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted how many teams work, from face-to-face interactions to remote and hybrid forms of collaboration. Even at its best, though, virtual collaboration remains less effective than face-to-face collaboration, leaving millions of workers with both the temporary and permanent challenges of virtual work. Design is uniquely positioned to not only alleviate these ails but even make virtual teams strategically advantageous by developing innovative solutions specifically for hybrid virtual collaboration. To aid in that process, this article summarizes the communication technologies, individual techniques, and leadership techniques that "work" for effective virtual collaboration. Then, we highlight several outstanding concerns and possibilities as an impetus for designers and researchers to develop solutions to the challenges of sustained remote and hybrid collaboration. In doing so, we seek to motivate designers and researchers to consider social practices as designed artifacts, and therefore constituents of solutions to social systemic problems.

COVID‐19 pandemic influence on organizational knowledge management systems and practices: Insights from an Indian engineering services organization

“…Organizations thus need to carefully plan the training efforts necessary to familiarize the employee base about OKMSP on a periodic basic. Meluso et al (2020) have highlighted shortcomings in terms of the availability of effective collaboration tools at the time of sudden shift from WFO to WFH. The current study also observed that employees found scope for improvements in KM tools during current pandemic times.…”

“…These research findings are important from the context of WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meluso et al (2020) analyzed shift from face-to-face work environment to virtual work environment at such a rapid pace that the hybrid work environment step was skipped. The virtual collaboration tools were developed to aid the face-to-face working as well as hybrid working but they were not designed to support full virtual working.…”

Who and What is Driving Remote Working Research? A Bibliometric Study

“…and spread the virus (Abarca et al, 2020). All of this played a crucial role in the transition from face-to-face to remote work environment (Meluso et al, 2020).…”

Metaverse in the Virtual Workplace

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need to incorporate digital technologies (DTs) into the workplace, leading to a significant acceleration in the transition to DT adoption in various business areas (Davison, 2020;Newman & Ford, 2020;Selimović et al, 2021). During COVID-19, organizations were forced to immediately digitize the workplace and switch to the virtual environment (Meluso et al, 2020). As a result, organizations and employees alike became accustomed to new working environments and remote collaboration forms (Bailey & Breslin, 2020;Frost & Duan, 2020).…”