Current research projects: 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. Some selected publications: “A Pace not dictated by electrons”: An empirical study of work without email New Proceedings of ACM CHI 2012 (with Stephen Voida and Armand Cardello) Why do I keep interrupting myself? Environment, habit, and self-interruption Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 (with Laura Dabbish and Victor Gonzalez) The Japanese Garden: Task awareness for collaborative multitasking Proceedings of ACM Group 2010 (with Hideto Yuzawa) The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 (with Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke) Communication Chains and Multitasking. Proceedings of ACM 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 ACM CHI 2005 (with Victor Gonzalez and Justin Harris) Managing currents of work: Multi-tasking among multiple collaborations. Proceedings of ECSCW’05 (the European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work) (with Victor Gonzalez) "Constant, Constant, Multi-tasking Craziness”: Managing Multiple Working Spheres. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 (with Victor Gonzalez)

Current research projects:

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.

Some selected publications:

“A Pace not dictated by electrons”: An empirical study of work without email New

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2012 (with Stephen Voida and Armand Cardello)

Why do I keep interrupting myself? Environment, habit, and self-interruption

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 (with Laura Dabbish and Victor Gonzalez)

The Japanese Garden: Task awareness for collaborative multitasking

Proceedings of ACM Group 2010 (with Hideto Yuzawa)

The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress.

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 (with Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke)

Communication Chains and Multitasking.

Proceedings of ACM 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 ACM CHI 2005 (with Victor Gonzalez and Justin Harris)

Managing currents of work: Multi-tasking among multiple collaborations.

Proceedings of ECSCW’05 (the European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work) (with Victor Gonzalez)

"Constant, Constant, Multi-tasking Craziness”: Managing Multiple Working Spheres.

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2004 (with Victor Gonzalez)

Technology use in disrupted environments: When there is a major environmental disruption such as a natural disaster or war, it is not only the technical infrastructure that needs to be repaired but also the human infrastructure. I am currently studying collaboration resilience-the extent to which people continue to work and socialize despite such a disruption. In this project we are examining the role that information technology plays in helping people repair their human infrastructure. We are focusing on the use 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 during an environmental disruption.

Some selected publications:

Blogs as a Collective War Diary

Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2012 (with Mossaab Bagdouri, Leysia Palen, James Martin, Ban Al-Ani and Ken Anderson)

Technology-Mediated Social Arrangements to Resolve

Breakdowns in Infrastructure During Ongoing Disruption

ACM TOCHI, forthcoming (with Bryan Semaan)

The Egyptian blogosphere: A counter-narrative of the revolution

Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2012 (with Ban Al-Ani, Justin Chung, and Jennifer Jones)

‘Facebooking’ towards crisis recovery and beyond: Disruption as an opportunity

Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2012 (with Bryan Semaan)

Creating a context of trust with ICTs: Restoring a sense of normalcy in the environment

Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2011 (with Bryan Semaan)

Blogging in a Region of Conflict: Supporting Transition to Recovery.

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 (with Ban Al-Ani and Bryan Semaan)

Honorable mention for best paper

Resilience Through Technology Adoption:

Merging the Old and the New in Iraq

Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 (with Ban Al-Ani and Bryan Semaan)

Resilience in Collaboration: Technology as a Resource for New Patterns of Action

Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2008 (with Bryan Semaan)

Collaboration and 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.

Some selected publications:

Making infrastructure visible for nomadic work. Pervasive and Mobile Computing (2010).

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