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Sharing serendipity in the workplace

Authors:

Phillip Jeffrey,

Andrew McGrathAuthors Info & Claims

CVE '00: Proceedings of the third international conference on Collaborative virtual environments

Pages 173 - 179

https://doi.org/10.1145/351006.351037

Published: 01 September 2000 Publication History

Abstract

The Forum is a collaborative working environment that consists of two shared spaces: a space for informal interaction (Contact Space), and a workspace for synchronous meetings using audioconferencing support (Meeting Space). It is designed to enable people, who should meet each other to do so naturally, providing an environment for richer online interactions. This paper discusses three evaluations of the Forum Contact Space: a conceptual evaluation, a prototype evaluation, and an ethnographic evaluation. Each evaluation was undertaken to improve the Contact Space usability, examine whether it supports chance encounters, and learn from participant feedback, areas for improvement of future Forum versions.

The conceptual evaluation using focus groups showed group discrepancies regarding how the Contact Space would be beneficial for producing chance encounters. In the prototype evaluation, the findings suggest that chance encounters were produced and that the Concept Space was perceived as an environment for supporting group cohesiveness. A common theme from the findings of the ethnographic evaluation was the division of the Contact Space and its related parts into two tools: a core tool; and a peripheral tool, dependent on whether it was active. As groups are increasingly distributed over geographical distances, the benefits of a shared virtual space for communication and interaction are being realised.

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Cited By

Olshannikova EPirkkalainen HOlsson THuhtamäki J(2022)What Supports Serendipity on Twitter? Online Survey on the Role of Technology Characteristics and Their UseProceedings of the 25th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3569219.3569346(89-101)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569219.3569346
Olshannikova EOlsson THuhtamäki JPaasovaara SKärkkäinen H(2020)From Chance to SerendipityAdvances in Human-Computer Interaction10.1155/2020/18271072020Online publication date: 1-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2020/1827107
Montanari ATian ZFrancu ELucas BJones BZhou XMascolo C(2018)Measuring Interaction Proxemics with Wearable Light TagsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/31917572:1(1-30)Online publication date: 26-Mar-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3191757
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Index Terms

Sharing serendipity in the workplace
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Graphics systems and interfaces
      1. Virtual reality
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Mixed / augmented reality
      2. Virtual reality

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This paper explores whether chance encounters which occur within the workplace can be reproduced within a virtual environment. Participants' interaction in the Forum Contact Space, a networked virtual world designed to support chance encounters, was ...
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cover image ACM Conferences

CVE '00: Proceedings of the third international conference on Collaborative virtual environments

September 2000

217 pages

ISBN:1581133030

DOI:10.1145/351006

Copyright © 2000 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 September 2000

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Cited By

Olshannikova EPirkkalainen HOlsson THuhtamäki J(2022)What Supports Serendipity on Twitter? Online Survey on the Role of Technology Characteristics and Their UseProceedings of the 25th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3569219.3569346(89-101)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3569219.3569346
Olshannikova EOlsson THuhtamäki JPaasovaara SKärkkäinen H(2020)From Chance to SerendipityAdvances in Human-Computer Interaction10.1155/2020/18271072020Online publication date: 1-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1155/2020/1827107
Montanari ATian ZFrancu ELucas BJones BZhou XMascolo C(2018)Measuring Interaction Proxemics with Wearable Light TagsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/31917572:1(1-30)Online publication date: 26-Mar-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3191757
McCay-Peet LToms E(2017)Researching Serendipity in Digital Information EnvironmentsSynthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services10.2200/S00790ED1V01Y201707ICR0599:6(i-91)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.2200/S00790ED1V01Y201707ICR059
Montanari AMascolo CSailer KNawaz S(2017)Detecting Emerging Activity-Based Working Traits through Wearable TechnologyProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/31309511:3(1-24)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3130951
Montanari A(2017)Mobile sensing for social interaction monitoring and modelling2017 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops)10.1109/PERCOMW.2017.7917538(103-104)Online publication date: Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/PERCOMW.2017.7917538
Montanari ANawaz SMascolo CSailer K(2017)A Study of Bluetooth Low Energy performance for human proximity detection in the workplace2017 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom)10.1109/PERCOM.2017.7917855(90-99)Online publication date: Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/PERCOM.2017.7917855
Björneborn L(2017)Three key affordances for serendipityJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-07-2016-009773:5(1053-1081)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2016-0097
Montanari AJain PGeorgiev P(2015)Multimodal Indoor Social Interaction Sensing and Real-time Feedback for Behavioural InterventionProceedings of the 2015 Workshop on Wireless of the Students, by the Students, & for the Students10.1145/2801694.2801706(7-9)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2801694.2801706
Brown CEfstratiou CLeontiadis IQuercia DMascolo CFussell SLutters WMorris MReddy M(2014)Tracking serendipitous interactionsProceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing10.1145/2531602.2531641(1072-1081)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2531602.2531641
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