University of Twente Student Theses
How social cues shape remote collaborative work processes : establishing an abstraction hierarchy for evaluating computer-supported collaborative work tools
Riet, M. ter (2022) How social cues shape remote collaborative work processes : establishing an abstraction hierarchy for evaluating computer-supported collaborative work tools.
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| Abstract: | How do social cues influence the work processes of remote collaboration? By conducting a systematic literature review, this study tries to establish the fundamental relations between social cues and the work processes in remote collaboration. Additional literature was examined to establish a preliminary abstraction hierarchy describing teamwork and technologies in remote teams. Based on evidence of relationships between social cues and work processes found in the literature review, the preliminary abstraction hierarchy was modified to visualize which social cues facilitate certain remote collaborative work processes. On the basis of the established abstraction hierarchy, this study provides an ‘in-principle’ evaluation of ‘VRComm', an end-to-end web system that enables remote conferencing in virtual reality to test whether the abstraction hierarchy provides a framework for identifying the strengths and points for improvement for computer-supported remote collaborative work tools. According to the evidence found in the literature review, shared gaze and gesture cues mostly facilitate the processes of conversational grounding and co-presence awareness. Furthermore, gaze cues also play a role in distributed performance monitoring. Overall, gaze and gesture cues facilitate the work processes in similar ways. Namely, to re-direct a coworker’s attention and enable the use of deictic references to make communication more efficient. Furthermore, gesture cues enable co-workers to perceive actions in a direction relative to target objects. Moreover, non-oriented action gestures cues like head-nodding enable co-workers to perceive that their partner is understanding the dialogue. This allows collaborators to better express themselves and, consequently, being able to understand each other better. Moreover, shared gaze and gesture cues also benefit the feeling of togetherness, as these cues display an interaction. These findings are similar to the findings of the ‘inprinciple’ evaluation of VRComm. Gesture and gaze directions cues benefited the processes of conversational grounding and co-presence awareness. Furthermore, the projected user’s representations in virtual reality (VR) allowed collaborators to intervene when incorrect actions were being performed. Moreover, these representations allowed to perceive each other’s posture or user’s intensity in performing actions. Therefore, the projected user’s representations promoted the processes of distributed performance- and workload monitoring. Overall, the abstraction hierarchy demonstrated to be a useful framework for identifying the strengths and points of improvement of VRComm. By using this framework, 2 recommendations could be made to develop VRComm for broader remote collaboration purposes. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Programme: | Psychology MSc (66604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/90541 |
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