Skip to main content

Hybrid Meetings in the Modern Workplace: Stories of Success and Failure

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing (CRIWG+CollabTech 2019)

Abstract

Hybrid meetings, in which co-located and remote participants connect via video or/audio, have become ubiquitous in the globalized modern workplace. Despite, or perhaps because of this ubiquity, conducting hybrid meetings is not straightforward. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities and challenges of hybrid meetings. We conducted a multi-site study of hybrid meetings in two global software companies in Europe, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and video-analysis. Our findings show that there is a significant diversity in formats and requirements for hybrid meetings in different working environments. Further, hybrid meeting participants perceive and handle a range of both expected and emergent problems. While some problems can be attributed to difficulties or failures of technical infrastructure, others arise out of asymmetries of interaction and social and cultural context across the co-located and remote settings. We argue that managing these asymmetries is key to a successful hybrid meeting.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bekkering, E., Shim, J.P.: Trust in videoconferencing. Commun. ACM 49(7), 103–107 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bell, G., Dourish, P.: Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision. Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. 11(2), 133–143 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bradner, E., Mark, G.: Social presence with video and application sharing. In: Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, pp. 154–161. ACM (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Charmaz, K.: Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. Sage, London (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Diamant, E.I., Fussell, S.R., Lo, F.l.: Where did we turn wrong?: unpacking the effect of culture and technology on attributions of team performance. In: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 383–392. ACM (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Diamant, E.I., Fussell, S.R., Lo, F.L.: Collaborating across cultural and technological boundaries: team culture and information use in a map navigation task. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration, pp. 175–184. ACM (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dourish, P., Adler, A., Bellotti, V., Henderson, A.: Your place or mine? Learning from long-term use of audio-video communication. Comput. Support. Coop. Work (CSCW) 5(1), 33–62 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Fussell, S.R., Setlock, L.D., Yang, J., Ou, J., Mauer, E., Kramer, A.D.: Gestures over video streams to support remote collaboration on physical tasks. Hum. Comput. Interact. 19(3), 273–309 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Heath, C., Luff, P.: Disembodied conduct: communication through video in a multi-media office environment. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 99–103. ACM (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Heath, C., Luff, P.: Media space and communicative asymmetries: preliminary observations of video-mediated interaction. Hum. Comput. Interact. 7(3), 315–346 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hossain, E., Babar, M.A., Paik, H.: Using scrum in global software development: a systematic literature review. In: 2009 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering, pp. 175–184, July 2009. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2009.25

  12. Huang, W., Olson, J.S., Olson, G.M.: Camera angle affects dominance in video-mediated communication. In: CHI 2002 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 716–717. ACM (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Isaacs, E.A., Tang, J.C.: What video can and cannot do for collaboration: a case study. Multimedia Syst. 2(2), 63–73 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kristoffersson, A., Coradeschi, S., Loutfi, A.: A review of mobile robotic telepresence. Adv. Hum. Comput. Interact. 2013, 3 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Mukawa, N., Oka, T., Arai, K., Yuasa, M.: What is connected by mutual gaze?: user’s behavior in video-mediated communication. In: CHI 2005 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1677–1680. ACM (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Nakanishi, H., Tanaka, K., Wada, Y.: Remote handshaking: touch enhances video-mediated social telepresence. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2143–2152. ACM (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Neustaedter, C., Venolia, G., Procyk, J., Hawkins, D.: To beam or not to beam: a study of remote telepresence attendance at an academic conference. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 418–431. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ou, J., Fussell, S.R., Chen, X., Setlock, L.D., Yang, J.: Gestural communication over video stream: supporting multimodal interaction for remote collaborative physical tasks. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, pp. 242–249. ACM (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Oulasvirta, A.: FEATURE: when users do the Ubicomp. Interactions 15(2), 6–9 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Oulasvirta, A., Sumari, L.: Mobile kits and laptop trays: managing multiple devices in mobile information work. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1127–1136. ACM (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Setlock, L.D., Fussell, S.R., Neuwirth, C.: Taking it out of context: collaborating within and across cultures in face-to-face settings and via instant messaging. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 604–613. ACM (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Smith, D., et al.: Overhear: augmenting attention in remote social gatherings through computer-mediated hearing. In: CHI 2005 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1801–1804. ACM (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Tan, A., Kondoz, A.M.: Barriers to virtual collaboration. In: CHI 2008 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2045–2052. ACM (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Teoh, C., Regenbrecht, H., O’Hare, D.: Investigating factors influencing trust in video-mediated communication. In: Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of Australia on Computer-Human Interaction, pp. 312–319. ACM (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Weiser, M.: The computer for the 21st century. Sci. Am. 265(3), 94–105 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Xu, B., Ellis, J., Erickson, T.: Attention from afar: simulating the gazes of remote participants in hybrid meetings. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 101–113. ACM (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Yamashita, N., Hirata, K., Aoyagi, S., Kuzuoka, H., Harada, Y.: Impact of seating positions on group video communication. In: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 177–186. ACM (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Yankelovich, N., Kaplan, J., Provino, J., Wessler, M., DiMicco, J.M.: Improving audio conferencing: are two ears better than one? In: Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 333–342. ACM (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Yankelovich, N., Simpson, N., Kaplan, J., Provino, J.: Porta-person: telepresence for the connected conference room. In: CHI 2007 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2789–2794. ACM (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Yankelovich, N., Walker, W., Roberts, P., Wessler, M., Kaplan, J., Provino, J.: Meeting central: making distributed meetings more effective. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 419–428. ACM (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Banu Saatçi’s work has been supported by Microsoft Research through its PhD Scholarship Programme in EMEA. We thank both companies and their employees for taking part in our research and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback along with Christian Remy, Gökçe Elif Baykal, Midas Nouwens, Bjarke Vognstrup Fog, Cristian Roner and Kaya Akyüz for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Banu Saatçi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Saatçi, B., Rädle, R., Rintel, S., O’Hara, K., Nylandsted Klokmose, C. (2019). Hybrid Meetings in the Modern Workplace: Stories of Success and Failure. In: Nakanishi, H., Egi, H., Chounta, IA., Takada, H., Ichimura, S., Hoppe, U. (eds) Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing. CRIWG+CollabTech 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11677. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28011-6_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28011-6_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28010-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28011-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics