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BEACON: A CSCW Tool for Enhancing Co-Located Meetings Through Temporal and Activity Awareness

Authors:
Ole-Edvard Ørebæk
David Aarlien
Fahad Faisal Said
Karoline Andreassen
Klaudia Carcani

Keywords: awareness meetings; CSCW; temporal awareness; activity awareness; design study

Abstract:
This paper explores how enhancement of temporal awareness and activity awareness affects co-located meetings' effectiveness and efficiency. Our focus is meetings happening as part of a project where cooperation is essential for its fulfillment. As a case study, we investigated group work in university projects. In a preliminary study, we found that individuals deviate from topics due to the lack of structure, which results in time wasted on irrelevant discussions. Agendas are essential in order to conduct a productive meeting. In order to investigate this issue, a prototype, “BEACON”, was developed with two components. The first component is a desktop dashboard revolving around creating and managing meeting agendas, as well as having an integrated co-writing noting tool that contributes to temporal awareness. The second component is a status-based artifact that uses color and sound as notifications of defined time limits for different activities in the meeting agenda and contributes to activity awareness. An evaluation with a group of 6 persons was conducted. The findings showed that enhancing temporal and activity awareness through displayed shared notes and a clearly presented agenda during the meeting contributed to generate more ideas and keep the discussions focused. Participants expressed that the artifact’s colors dictated the pace of the meeting positively, influencing them to optimize the available time and reach conclusions. Thus, we conclude that the enhancement of temporal and activity awareness in a workspace-like meeting setting can increase meeting effectiveness and be an incentive of better cooperation within a project.

Pages: 46 to 53

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4138

ISBN: 978-1-61208-761-0

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020