Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting multitasking is closely linked to people's productivity and wellbeing. However, we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and its potential impact. In this paper, we present what we believe is the most comprehensive study of remote meeting multitasking behavior through an analysis of a large-scale telemetry dataset collected from February to May 2020 of U.S. Microsoft employees and a 715-person diary study. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic meeting characteristics such as size, length, time, and type, significantly correlate with the extent to which people multitask, and multitasking can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Our findings suggest important best-practice guidelines for remote meetings (e.g., avoid important meetings in the morning) and design implications for productivity tools (e.g., support positive remote multitasking).
翻译:虚拟会议对于远程工作至关重要,因为在没有面对面互动的情况下需要同步合作。 会议期间的多任务与人们的生产力和福祉密切相关。 然而,我们目前对远程会议多重任务及其潜在影响的理解有限。 在本文中,我们通过分析美国微软公司雇员从2020年2月至5月收集的大规模遥测数据集和715人日记研究,展示了我们认为最全面的远程会议多任务行为研究。 我们的结果表明,规模、长度、时间和类型等内在会议特征与人们多任务、多任务和多任务能够带来积极和消极结果的程度密切相关。 我们的研究结果为远程会议提出了重要的最佳做法指南(例如,避免上午的重要会议)和对生产力工具的设计影响(例如,支持积极的远程多任务)。