Making remote 'meeting hopping' work: Assistance to initiate, join and leave meetings

Abstract

Recently, it has become more and more common for colleagues and project teams to cooperate at a distance. In order for cooperation at a distance to really boom, it should be made easier to have ad hoc, short, informal meetings. Here it is important to receive cues about the availability of the person you wish to speak to. These cues are usually apparent in a situation of physical proximity, but they are not readily accessible at a distance. Also, attending formal meetings should be made more efficient and attractive, by allowing participants to just attend those parts of the meeting that are relevant to them. This 'meeting hopping' should be organized in a way not detrimental to the ongoing meeting. This paper provides an exploration of how a virtual 'meeting assistant' that could support remote meeting participants to initiate, join and leave both formal and informal meetings in a natural, non-obtrusive way should be designed, in the form of a scenario and some examples of user interfaces. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.