The Impact of Avatars, Social Norms and Copresence on the Collaboration Effectiveness of AEC Virtual Teams

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dc.contributor.authorAnderson, Anneen
dc.contributor.authorDossick, Carrie Sturtsen
dc.contributor.authorIorio, Joshen
dc.contributor.authorTaylor, John E.en
dc.date.accessioned2019-07-31T16:46:51Zen
dc.date.available2019-07-31T16:46:51Zen
dc.date.issued2017en
dc.description.abstractA growing number of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms are outsourcing complex design and construction work to international vendors. Due to the significant geographic distances that can separate project team members in global design networks, much of this work is executed in virtual teams, defined as teams composed of geographically separated members who collaborate to accomplish organizational tasks mediated by technology. The challenges of working in geographically distributed networks have prompted the development of alternative, virtual workspaces. Questions remain on how these virtual workspaces support or hinder collaborative work. People are social beings that rely on body language and other non-verbal cues to communicate. What happens to team formation and collaborative effectiveness when non-verbal cues are mediated through avatar actions? In this paper, qualitative ethnographic data collected over four years from studies conducted in a 3D virtual world are used to examine collaboration effectiveness of global virtual engineering project teams. We found that avatar movement and position was effective at communicating nonverbal information, even when done so unintentionally. Avatar actions that map to established social norms in the physical world results in more efficient communication. Collaboration was also enhanced when gesture bubbles were used for backchannel communication and when text chat was used to avoid interrupting voice communication. We found collaboration was hindered when the learning curve was too steep for participants to adapt to tool use or avatar actions in the environment. These findings have important implications for the future of collaboration in virtual environments, particularly in the AEC industry where 3D models can be imported into the virtual environment and explored synchronously by a project team.en
dc.description.notesThis material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-0943069. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors also wish to thank the Centennial Foundation of the Finnish Technologies and Columbia University for additional project funding as well as our other CyberGRID collaborators Professor Riitta Smeds at the Helsinki University of Technology, Ashwin Mahalingam at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and Timo Hartmann at the University of Twente, and Rishee Jain of Stanford University (formerly Columbia University).en
dc.description.sponsorshipNational Science Foundation [IIS-0943069]en
dc.description.sponsorshipCentennial Foundation of the Finnish Technologiesen
dc.description.sponsorshipColumbia Universityen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.issn1874-4753en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/92206en
dc.identifier.urlhttps://www.itcon.org/paper/2017/15en
dc.identifier.volume22en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
dc.subjectBIM coordinationen
dc.subjectcollaboration technologiesen
dc.subjectdistributed teamsen
dc.subjectsocial normsen
dc.subjectvirtual worldsen
dc.titleThe Impact of Avatars, Social Norms and Copresence on the Collaboration Effectiveness of AEC Virtual Teamsen
dc.title.serialJournal of Information Technology in Constructionen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
dc.type.dcmitypeStillImageen

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