Observational Study

How do team members interact with each other in a remote work environment?

The purpose of this project is to examine team processes in a remote setting. Participants working on open-ended design projects over the course of a semester in self-managed teams were recruited for this project. We are particularly interested in the personality traits and attitudes associated with conversational patterns (i.e., turn taking, interruptions, duration of speaking, etc.), the patterns of team interaction that are associated with positive team attitudes and performance, and leadership emergence in teams. Our research design provides an opportunity to study team interactions via self-report and objective measures over the course of time without the constraints of a laboratory setting.

Virtual Team Problem-Solving Study

How does team personality composition impact communication processes and problem solving?

The purpose of this project is to investigate how team composition, team processes, and team outcomes are interrelated. In particular, we are interested in examining how the personality composition of a team predicts communication patterns and how those communication patterns relate to a team’s performance. To assess these dynamics, participants were recruited to work in online 3 person teams on a design-oriented task. In addition to assessing the dispositional antecedents of team communication and performance, our research will also assess collective intelligence by analyzing the differences between individual and team solutions.

Team-Based Online Gaming Study

How do team members work together on a complex design project in real time?

The purpose of this project is to study teamwork behaviors via the gaming platform Minecraft. The mechanics of the gaming environment will allow us to measure objective team member contributions at an extremely detailed level, thereby enhancing our understanding of effective collaborative processes.

Conversational Modeling

Can conversational patterns and team dynamics be predicted by team member composition?

Using data we collected from real-world design teams, we are currently developing a simulation model of conversational turn-taking behaviors. This project will allow us to determine which behaviors are essential to explaining both team and individual speaking patterns and will provide insight into the behavioral mechanisms underlying emergent communication network properties.

TeamDNA-Vision

How do we automatically capture “who looks at whom and when” from team meeting recordings?

To study how teams work together, realistic 360-degree team meeting videos contain many informative audio-visual modalities. Team interaction is one of the key determinants of how teams collaborate, which can be reflected by gaze exchange — who looks at whom and when. In this project, we develop an automated system that can directly estimate whom a participant is looking at given a person’s sitting position from 360-degree video frames, which facilitates studying what gaze exchange patterns are indicative of good teamwork.