Gloria Mark

My current research projects are:

Multi-tasking in the workplace: Over the last several years I have been studying the different ways that information workers experience disruptions in their work due to multi-tasking and interruptions. With students we have done field studies in the workplace where people's actions have been carefully measured (to the second). Not only do information workers switch continually among multiple tasks (every three minutes on average) but they also switch continually among interactions in varied organizational contexts. These results challenge the traditional way that most IT is designed to organize information, i.e. in terms of distinct tasks. Instead, we are exploring how IT can support information organization in a way consistent with a more natural way of organizing work, in terms of thematically connected units of work, or working spheres. Here are some publications:

The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. Proceedings of CHI 2008 (with Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke)

Communication Chains and Multitasking. Proceedings of CHI 2008 (with Norman Su)

Workplace connectors as Facilitators for Work. Proceedings of Communities and Technologies (C&T’07) (with Norman Su and Stewart Sutton)

No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work. Proceedings of CHI 2005 (with Victor Gonzalez and Justin Harris)

Managing currents of work: Multi-tasking among multiple collaborations. Proceedings of the European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’05) (with Victor Gonzalez)

"Constant, Constant, Multi-tasking Craziness”: Managing Multiple Working Spheres. Proceedings of CHI 2004 (with Victor Gonzalez)

Here are some reports in the media:

Meet the Life Hackers, New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005

“How interruptions can destroy your day” New Scientist, June 28, 2006

“Help! I’ve Lost My Focus”, Time Magazine, January 16, 2006

“Hey, We’re Trying To Do Some Work Here”, The Sunday Times, UK, Feb. 12, 2006

“Driven to Distraction”, Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2005

“Technology Has Us So Plugged Into Data, We Have Turned Off”, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2003

Collaboration--distributed interaction, new organizational forms: Collaboration is becoming ubiquitious; at the same time the emergence of new technologies have been changing the landscape of interaction and collaboration. I am interested in the effect that information technologies have on collaboration and the development of new organizational practices such as network-centricity, group-to-group collaboration, nomadic work, and large-scale collaboration. I am also very interested in how Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, social-networking sites, etc.) are used in collaboration and how they can be integrated into the course of daily work. Here are some publications on this topic:

Designing for Nomadic Work. Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems '08 (with Norman Su)

Transitioning to Network-Centricity: Overcoming Hierarchical Anchors. ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology (CHIMIT’07) (with Steve Abrams)

The Human Infrastructure of Cyberinfrastructure. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on CSCW (CSCW’06) (with Charlotte Lee and Paul Dourish)

Group-to-Group Distance Collaboration: Examining the “Space Between”. Proceedings of the 8th European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’03), (with Steve Abrams and Nayla Nassif).

Groupware Adoption in a Distributed Organization: Transporting and transforming technology through social worlds, Information and Organization (with Steven Poltrock)

Why Distance Matters: Effects on Cooperation, Persuasion and Deception. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on CSCW (CSCW’02) (with Erin Bradner)

Extreme Collaboration. Communications of the ACM

Conventions and commitments in distributed CSCW groups. CSCW Journal

Technology use in disrupted environments: There has been little or no attention given to how human infrastructure can be repaired when there is a major environmental disruption. I am currently studying collaboration resilience-the extent to which people continue their collaborative work despite such a disruption. We are currently conducting an empirical study of people who experienced a prolonged disruption to their work and personal lives and are examining the role that technology played in helping people repair their human infrastructure and in rebuilding a sense of “normalcy” in their disrupted environment. I am especially interested in the role of Web 2.0 technologies: blogs, wikis, social networking sites, video-sharing, and others that people use to be resilient in their work and lives.