Previous research has shown that workplace social norms influence employee well-being. However, such norms vary based on the cultures in which workplaces are embedded, suggesting that cultural differences may influence perceived norms about when and where work should occur. These differences, in turn, could impact employee well-being. Accordingly, through the lenses of cultural tightness-looseness and individualism-collectivism, this paper investigates cultural differences in perceived social norms, and the relationship between those norms and hybrid workers' well-being. We conducted a survey of 1,000 Japanese and 1,000 American hybrid workers. Results indicated that American respondents perceived stronger norms and demonstrated a higher willingness to conform to norms compared to Japanese respondents. Additionally, strong injunctive norms were positively associated with well-being among Americans but not among Japanese. Interviews (N = 24) showed that Japanese perceived injunctive norms negatively, while Americans saw them positively. We discuss implications for future remote-collaboration technologies in hybrid-work settings.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641928
Ineffective meetings due to unclear goals are major obstacles to productivity, yet support for intentionality is surprisingly scant in our meeting and allied workflow technologies. To design for intentionality, we need to understand workers’ attitudes and practices around goals. We interviewed 21 employees of a global technology company and identified contrasting mental models of meeting goals: meetings as a means to an end, and meetings as an end in themselves. We explore how these mental models impact how meeting goals arise, goal prioritization, obstacles to considering goals, and how lack of alignment around goals may create tension between organizers and attendees. We highlight the challenges in balancing preparation, constraining scope, and clear outcomes, with the need for intentional adaptability and discovery in meetings. Our findings have implications for designing systems which increase effectiveness in meetings by catalyzing intentionality and reducing tension in the organisation of meetings.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642670
While distributed workers rely on scheduled meetings for coordination and collaboration, these meetings can also challenge their ability to focus. Protecting worker focus has been addressed from a technical perspective, but companies are now attempting organizational interventions, such as meeting-free weeks. Recognizing distributed collaboration as a sociotechnical challenge, we first present an interview study with distributed workers participating in meeting-free weeks at an enterprise software company. We identify three orientations workers exhibit during these weeks: Focus, Collaborative, and Time-Bound, each with varying levels and use of unstructured time. These different orientations result in challenges in attention negotiation, which may be suited for technical interventions. This motivated a follow-up study investigating attention negotiation and the compensating mechanisms workers developed during meeting-free weeks. Our framework identified tensions between the attention-getting and attention-delegation strategies. We extend past work to show how workers adapt their virtual collaboration mechanisms in response to organizational interventions.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642175
In a rapidly evolving UX/UI design landscape marked by technological advancements and shifts toward hybrid work, understanding the implications of these changes on software prototyping practices is crucial. This study investigates the influence of evolving work practices, tool advancements, and designers' attitudes on prototyping practices and design processes in the contemporary software industry. Based on in-depth interviews with 10 practitioners and educators, we explore the factors contributing to the preference for digital-first prototypes and the diminishing appeal of low-fidelity prototyping methods. Our findings reveal how digital prototypes outshine physical counterparts in hybrid work, the role of all-in-one digital tools in centralizing designers' workflows and encouraging high-fidelity prototyping, corporate preferences for visually appealing prototypes, and the impact of designers' educational backgrounds, generational differences, and professional maturity. This research offers valuable insights to inform decision-making and strategies for design practitioners, educators, and organizations in adapting to current and future prototyping practices.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642774
With the rise of remote and hybrid work after COVID-19, there is growing interest in understanding remote workers' experiences and designing digital technology for the future of work within the field of HCI. To gain a holistic understanding of how remote workers navigate the blurred boundary between work and home and how designers can better support their boundary work, we employ humanistic geography as a lens. We engaged in co-speculative design practices with 11 remote workers in the US, exploring how future technologies might sustainably enhance participants’ work and home lives in remote/hybrid arrangements. We present the imagined technologies that resulted from this process, which both reinforce remote workers’ existing boundary work practices through everyday routines/rituals and reclaim the notion of home by fostering independence, joy, and healthy relationships. Our discussions with participants inform implications for designing digital technologies that promote sustainability in the future remote/hybrid work landscape.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642381