Download Understanding and modeling human capabilities

Group Dynamics
October 7, 2008
Agenda
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Visitor from Deloitte
Take your quizzes
Go over last week’s quiz
Group Dynamics
Programming Assignment details
Upcoming
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Group work: integral to organizations
• Increasingly, organizations are relying more
and more on group work
• Broad technology choices in organizations
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
The role of proximity in collaboration
• Proximity leads to collaboration because it
fosters informal communication (Hagstrom,
1965)
• Allen (1977): if you’re farther away than 30
meters from a colleague, you might as well
be several miles away
• Dormitory residents most likely to form
friendships when they live in close proximity
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Study to test questions about proximity
• 70 semi-structured, hour long interviews with scientists in
3 fields
• Survey of 66 psychologists
• Archival study of 93 members of a large organization
• Data collected:
– Whether each possible pair of 93 researchers (4278)
published a research report
– Proximity in terms of the org chart
– Physical proximity
– Research similarity
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Role of similar interests?
Perhaps researchers with similar interests have
offices near each other?
But this doesn’t explain it fully
Proximity provides opportunity for informal
interaction
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
What does informal communication do?
• Proximity leads to frequency of communication
– As distance between people increases, phone
communication does as well (Mayer, 1976)
– Same relationship with electronic messages (Eveland &
Bikson, ‘87)
• Perhaps people close to each other like each other
more (Zajonc, 1968)
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Physical proximity related to frequency of
communication in planning and writing
stage of research
Quality of communication
• Proximity leads to communication that involves
more than one sensory channel
• “Richer” communication can enable researchers
to develop ideas, find common interests
• Which stage of research do you think has the
most frequent communication?
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Cost of communication
• Proximity enables
– “low-cost” communication
– quick interactions
• Time savings
– For information workers, time is the scarcest
resource
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Communication technology requirements
Communication tools for planned and
unplanned interactions in same and different
times
• Coordination and management tools
• Task-oriented tools to integrate products
Typically most tools support only a single type
of process
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Tools can facilitate unplanned
interactions at a low-cost
• As with proximity, tools need to provide
frequent communication
• Maintaining and building shared knowledge
• Provide backchannel and feedback
mechanisms
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Technology and feedback
• What is backchannel response?
• What does it do?
• What happens without feedback?
– Multi-channel communication can lead to a lack of feedback, not
knowing who might be talking
Emoticons can be used for spontaneous feedback, but are limited
:-), LOL, IMHO
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Communication technologies
enable different feedback
• Webcams, video-conferencing
• Teleconferencing
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Media Spaces
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
• Audio space
(Ackerman et al.)
• IM
• Email
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Virtual Worlds
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
And now for stuff from your
reading….
Attributes of Group Behavior
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Cohesiveness
Egocentrism
Extremitization
Groupthink (Janis, 1972)
Name some consequences of bad group
decisions
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Face to face and Electronic Groups
• Face-to-face groups often have predictable
behavior
• Electronic group behavior is less predictable
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Laboratory studies vs. naturalistic
observation
E-groups: more equal participation
• In 3-person electronic groups, each member
tended to talk 1/3 of time
• Status cues missing in e-groups
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Flaming
• Groups tend to make more extreme (risky)
decisions than individuals
• Electronic discussion-more likely to result in
flaming behavior
– Expt.: 102 flaming remarks vs. 12 in f2f (24 meetings)
• Electronic groups reduce conformity
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Decision quality
• Impacts of high status people
• Who is risk seeking and who is risk averse?
• E-groups
– will consult more people
– ignore faulty reasoning of those with good social skills or high
status
– May experience more conflict
– Make riskier choices
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Time to decisions
• Takes four times as long for e-groups as f2f
(3-person groups)
• Decisions by e-groups that were rushed were
more extreme
• Faster decisions not necessarily better
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Electronic group dynamics
• Technology can change the dynamics of a
group
• Moreover, particular kind of computer media
can affect group communication
• Organizational/management policies can be
used to guide dynamics
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Your programming assignment
• Groups of three
• Any language you want
• Must be an educational game or experience for kids
(think 12 and under) in schools
• Must accept input from multiple kids at once
• Must display individual views to each student and
group view to be displayed at front of classroom
• Sign up on Wiki… meet with me Wed and Fri
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes
Upcoming
• This week – small group meetings
– BE ON TIME
• Next Tuesday – Grudin’s challenges for
groupware
• Next Thursday – Programming for
Groupware
Informatics 153 – Fall 2008 – Gillian Hayes