A study of co-worker awareness in remote collaboration over a shared application

Following recent developments in groupware that allow teams of co-located and distributed users to work simultaneously on a shared application, differences in the relative awareness of co-located and remote users have been identified. This paper examines users' perceived awareness of others and their observed direction of attention in this context. A study of six groups of three users distributed across two sites reveals that the disparity in awareness between co-located and remote users may not be such a problem as previously suggested. Results also show that for the tasks employed herein, users rely predominantly on cues within the shared application such as multiple cursors, rather than the videoconference channel, to remain aware of the actions of their collaborators. The study also provides further evidence for the importance of additional awareness cues, such as "video arms".