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... As videoconferencing becomes the dominant medium for professional communications, it introduces a myriad of new challenges, including physical and mental fatigue [8,38], distractions [63], and a diminished sense of connectedness [92]. Although these challenges are widespread, they may disproportionately impact marginalized social groups, such as women [32,87] and people with disabilities [74,91,99,105], making workplace less equitable and inclusive. ...
... VC offers real-time, multi-modal communication across distances when face-to-face meetings are impractical [37]. Despite its benefits, videoconferencing presents challenges such as reduced non-verbal cues, turn-taking confusions, constant distractions, reduced physical movement, heightened self-consciousness from self-view, and connection issues, contributing to the common experience of "Zoom fatigue" [8,63]. The shift to VC also comes with implications for our social connections. ...
... Videoconferencing can be exhausting [8]. The limited nonverbal channels to connect with people [73], the mental stress from the "Zoom gaze" [8,38], and the constant distractions from one's environment [63], all contribute to the heightened cognitive load of video conferences for all participants [92]. For people with disabilities, such extra cognitive cost, combined with the accessibility and technical barriers created by videoconferencing technologies, could make videoconferencing even more emotionally draining and unsatisfying [27,91,99,105]. ...
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Existing videoconferencing (VC) technologies are often optimized for productivity and efficiency, with little support for the "soft side" of VC meetings such as empathy, authenticity, belonging, and emotional connections. This paper presents findings from a 15-month long autoethnographic study of VC experiences by the first author, a person who stutters (PWS). Our research shed light on the hidden costs of VC for PWS, uncovering the substantial emotional and cognitive efforts that other meeting attendants are often unaware of. Recognizing the disproportionate burden on PWS to be heard in VC, we propose a set of design implications for a more inclusive communication environment, advocating for shared responsibility among all, including communication technologies, to ensure the inclusion and respect of every voice.
... This study aimed to explore how code-mixing multilingual users perceived their current conversational agents and what they expected from future agents capable of code-mixing. So that we would be able to discover user needs and wants from the analysis of the results, we adopted the focus group interview method and the participatory design workshop method as the study methodologies [61]. Focus group interviews are well-known for helping participants recall their past experiences [59] and become deeply involved in the "given topic" [111]. ...
... Therefore, this study used group interviews to discover the challenges that the multilingual users had experienced with their conversational agents and what, specifically, had caused these problems regarding code-mixing. Moreover, having been inspired by similar studies [48,61] that used workshops to reveal implicit user needs from the participants' own solutions, as well as studies that used a speculative design method on conversational agents to discover user needs around emerging technology [120], focus group interview was followed by a participatory design workshop that explored the users' potential need for a conversational agent with an ability to code-mix. ...
... The audio recordings of the study were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic coding approach [40], following the practice of similar qualitative research regarding HCI [24,26,61]. The initial coding was completed using an inductive approach. ...
... A vast variety of research on benefits [4,22,24,28] and challenges [3,26,35,36,45] of remote work was already conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the research inevitably had to depend on restricted study settings (e.g., in a laboratory) or specific groups of workers, because remote work was not only an uncommon practice [37] but also regarded as a privilege or luxury for the financially comfortable (e.g., high-income or white-collar workers) [19]. Many researchers [13,41] have argued that studies conducted before COVID-19 could have looked at only one side of the phenomenon (e.g., individual-level outcomes or benefits [4]) and/or produced selection bias [38] by examining a specific group (e.g., office workers [19,37] or those who volunteer for remote work as an option [32]). This is because "existing knowledge on remote working has mostly been generated from a context in which remote working was only occasionally or infrequently practiced, and was only considered by some, but not all or most, of the workers within an organization" [60]. ...
... This is because "existing knowledge on remote working has mostly been generated from a context in which remote working was only occasionally or infrequently practiced, and was only considered by some, but not all or most, of the workers within an organization" [60]. Hence, a new line of research [13,41,60] has been conducted since COVID-19 by emphasizing contextual relevance to the COVID-19 crisis and its uniqueness; a large number of workers have globally engaged in remote work at an unprecedented scale [60], and such remote work was no longer an option but mandatory [13,60]. These recent studies have explored what unique challenges people experience while working remotely and how people are handling them [13,41,60]. ...
... Hence, a new line of research [13,41,60] has been conducted since COVID-19 by emphasizing contextual relevance to the COVID-19 crisis and its uniqueness; a large number of workers have globally engaged in remote work at an unprecedented scale [60], and such remote work was no longer an option but mandatory [13,60]. These recent studies have explored what unique challenges people experience while working remotely and how people are handling them [13,41,60]. Especially, prior research in the business disciplines (e.g., HRM) have heavily focused on individual work performance or team collaboration [59] under the WFH circumstance of COVID-19 by taking an organization-centered perspective [13] (e.g., why the performance of interns [68] and female researchers was increasingly negative during pandemic-era remote work, what difficulties managers are facing under distance management and how it could affect performance consequences of remote work [34], whether employees' perception of leaders' authenticity impacts employees' performance [17], etc.). ...
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Both enterprises and their employees have globally experienced remote work at an unprecedented scale since the outbreak of COVID-19. As the pandemic becomes less of a threat, some companies have called their employees back to a physical office, citing issues related to working remotely, but many employees have refused to return. Thus, working in the metaverse has gained much attention as an alternative that could complement the weaknesses of completely remote work or even offline work. However, we do not know yet what benefits and drawbacks the metaverse has as a legitimate workspace, because there are few real cases of 1) working in the metaverse and 2) working remotely at such an unprecedented scale. Thus, this paper aims to identify real challenges and opportunities the metaverse workspace presents when compared to remote work by conducting semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops with various employees and company stakeholders (e.g., HR managers and CEOs) who have experienced at least two of three work types: working in a physical office, remotely, or in the metaverse. Consequently, we identified 1) advantages and disadvantages of remote work and 2) opportunities and challenges of the metaverse. We further discuss design implications that may overcome the identified challenges of working in the metaverse.
... In this post-pandemic era, videoconferencing (VC) has emerged as a prominent and normalized mode for professional and interpersonal communications. This shift from in-person communication towards VC brings a myriad of challenges that are universally experienced by a wide range of users, such as reduced non-verbal cues, turn-taking confusion, constant distractions, heightened selfconsciousness from self-view, connectivity/technical difficulties, which collectively lead to "Zoom Fatigue" [4,35]. ...
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Videoconferencing (VC) has become a prominent and normalized mode of professional and personal communication, introducing universally experienced challenges such as reduced non-verbal cues and "Zoom Fatigue. " But People who stutter (PWS) encounter these obstacles with extra hurdles as existing VC technologies often rely on assumptions about speech patterns that don't accommodate stuttering. Leveraging and driven by the unique insights and experiences of PWS on VC, we conducted a two-phase co-design study with PWS to explore and reflect on the design space for inclusive and empowering VC technologies from their perspectives. Our findings present a broad design space for tools that support PWS before, during, and after VC, focusing on aspects such as supporting self-disclosure, educating non-stuttering audiences, and promoting personal reflection for long-term self-growth. While many design ideas by our participants embody universal value to all VC users, some carry an activism approach that proactively disrupts existing communication flows and norms to redistribute the power between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers in VC meetings. This work contributes to a thorough analysis of the design space and empowering PWS to be drivers and designers of inclusive VC experiences.
... Based on this, we removed papers that introduced system design without a clear connection to a hybrid work situation [4,24,55,61,65,84,95] and papers that turned out to focus on the individual person rather than the cooperative practice [6] such as a focus on distractions during remote meetings [64]. The result was 30 selected papers. ...
... With this paper, we problematise this view as it largely neglects the very essence of knowledge work, that is, individual, uninterrupted, and focused solo work. If meta-verses are to provide an alternative remote workplace, they must enable high performance work to maintain productivity (Lee et al. 2022;Xi et al. 2022). If collaboration is not the only dependent variable for researching knowledge work in meta-verses, what else is there except for performance? ...
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The changing nature of knowledge work creates demands for emerging technologies as enablers for workplace innovation. One emerging technology to potentially remedy drawbacks of remote work arrangements are meta-verses that merge physical reality with digital virtuality. In the literature, such innovations in the knowledge work sector have been primarily examined against the backdrop of collaboration as a dependent variable. In this paper, however, we investigate knowledge work in metaverses from a distraction-conflict perspective because independent, uninterrupted activities are as much characteristic of knowledge work as collaboration. Preliminary findings show that knowledge workers in meta-verses experience arousal from the 1) presence, appearance, and behaviour of other avatars, 2) realism, novelty, and affordances of the virtual environment, and 3) technological friction and navigation. This work has the theoretical implication that distraction-conflict theory must be extended to incorporate additional sources of arousal when applied to the context of knowledge work in metaverses.
... With this paper, we problematise this view as it largely neglects the very essence of knowledge work, that is, individual, uninterrupted, and focused solo work. If meta-verses are to provide an alternative remote workplace, they must enable high performance work to maintain productivity (Lee et al. 2022;Xi et al. 2022). If collaboration is not the only dependent variable for researching knowledge work in meta-verses, what else is there except for performance? ...
Conference Paper
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The changing nature of knowledge work creates demands for emerging technologies as enablers for workplace innovation. One emerging technology to potentially remedy drawbacks of remote work arrangements are meta-verses that merge physical reality with digital virtuality. In the literature, such innovations in the knowledge work sector have been primarily examined against the backdrop of collaboration as a dependent variable. In this paper, however, we investigate knowledge work in meta-verses from a distraction-conflict perspective because independent, uninterrupted activities are as much characteristic of knowledge work as collaboration. Preliminary findings show that knowledge workers in meta-verses experience arousal from the 1) presence, appearance, and behaviour of other avatars, 2) realism, novelty, and affordances of the virtual environment, and 3) technological friction and navigation. This work has the theoretical implication that distraction-conflict theory must be extended to incorporate additional sources of arousal when applied to the context of knowledge work in meta-verses.
... Finally, while we did observe did observe several of the common virtual communication issues (i.e., latency, eye contact, and issues with internet) [50,71], in the context of PLWD, these were unique due to the cost associated with conversation repair [64]. Similar issues were explored in research conducted by Neate et al. [61] with people living with aphasia. ...
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Purpose The current study investigates the impact of time and strain-based work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) on exhaustion, by considering the moderating effect of telework conducted during traditional and non-traditional work hours. Design/Methodology/Approach Data were obtained from professionals in a large computer company using survey methodology (N = 316). Findings Results from this study suggest that time and strain-based WFC and FWC were associated with more exhaustion, and that exhaustion associated with high WFC was worse for individuals with more extensive telework during traditional and non-traditional work hours. Implications This study provides managers with findings to more carefully design telework programs, showing evidence that the adverse impact of WFC/FWC on exhaustion may depend on the type of telework and level of conflict experienced. This suggests that managers may need to be more aware of the full range of characteristics which encapsulate the teleworker’s work practices before making decisions about how telework is implemented. Originality/Value By differentiating the timing of telework and its role on the WFC/FWC—exhaustion relationship, this study delves deeper into the contingent nature of telework and suggests that the extent of telework conducted during traditional and nontraditional work hours may play an influential role. In addition, these considerations are investigated in light of the bi-directional time-based and strain-based nature of WFC and FWC, helping to unravel some of telework’s complexities.
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The focus group (FG) technique has been recently rediscovered by social scientists. It has become the subject of important methodological discussions and it is now considered a very innovative research method. However, such a widespread use of FG seems to have become a fashionable research technique. The impression is that FG is often adopted without any prior consideration of whether it really is the most suitable research technique for achieving the cognitive goals of the research. At the same time, it seems that the FG is often adopted only because it is considered an easy-to-organise and inexpensive technique. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the nature of the FG, analyse its advantages and disadvantages and identify the cognitive problems that it helps to face. In order to discuss these two points, I will focus on the two main characteristics that differentiate the FG from other techniques of information gathering in social research. Firstly, in FGs the informative source is a group. Secondly, the heuristic value of this technique lies in the kind of interaction that emerges during the debate. Several researchers have indicated these two aspects as the main characteristics of FG; but only few authors have translated these comments into serious epistemological and methodological knowledge, thus allowing the FG to give its best results.
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Context: Home-based videoconferencing may be a promising vehicle for providing much-needed counseling services to at-risk adolescents with epilepsy and their families. However, there has been only limited research examining differences in user perceptions of telecommunication-mediated counseling versus traditional, office-based counseling. Objective: To examine differences between the perceptions of adolescents with epilepsy and their parents in regard to comfort, distraction, and therapeutic alliance across 3 different modalities: (a) home-based video-system counseling, (b) home-based speakerphone counseling, and (c) videotaped, office-based counseling. Results: Mothers and adolescents reported moderately high levels of comfort and therapeutic alliance and low levels of distraction across all modalities. Adolescents were more comfortable and less distracted than their mothers across all three conditions. Conclusions: These results lend preliminary support to the use of telecommunication-mediated counseling with at-risk adolescents with epilepsy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This fully updated edition of a best-selling textbook continues to provide the most comprehensive European introduction to issues in work and organisational psychology for those with no prior knowledge of the field.Presents a solid foundation on a range of core topics including working with technology, human performance, and the virtual organization. Updated throughout to include recently emerging themes and current views in the field Improved instructor and student support includes key studies, research close-ups, discussion points and three extensive case studies
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This paper reports on the implementation and use of a virtual collaboration system - a virtual collaborative desk (VCD) that has been introduced to a software design team in an organizational context. Virtual collaboration systems are complex and can be considered as social-technical systems, oftentimes encompassing several layers of both technical and social issues. If this multi-layered social-technical system is to work effectively and provide a dependable service, then all the layers must be well understood and structured accordingly. Otherwise, these layers can become barriers to virtual collaboration if they impede the collaborating users of a virtual team from attaining their goals. An amalgamation of principles from life-cycle and ethnomethodologically informed ethnography approaches in the evaluation of a virtual collaborative system is demonstrated in a case-study to enable researchers to understand what these issues are and how the different types of issues can prevent effective virtual collaboration.