Intentional Meetings
Evolving purposeful meeting systems, behaviors, and cultures with Generative AI
Intentional Meetings, part of the Tools For Thought project at Microsoft Research Cambridge UK, aims to understand how to help organizations develop a goal-oriented meeting lifecycle that leverages Generative AI to construct dynamic goal-driven interfaces that adapt to organizational and team tasks and contexts.
Understanding meetings
Meeting goals – Our current focus
How we can leverage Generative AI to help people reflect on meeting goals? Without a solid understanding of why we are meeting, meetings will always be ineffective. Our work on meeting goals is unique in both HCI and Meeting Science, both because of our empirical focus on goals, and because we have now explored all phases of the meeting lifecycle — before, during, and between meetings.
Formative studies
Prototype studies
- Before meetings: What Does Success Look Like? Catalyzing Meeting Intentionality with AI-Assisted Prospective Reflection
- Before and during meetings: The CoExplorer Technology Probe: A Generative AI-Powered Adaptive Interface to Support Intentionality in Planning and Running Video Meetings
- During meetings: Are We On Track? AI-Assisted Active and Passive Goal Reflection During Meetings – Microsoft Research
- Between meetings: Designing Interfaces that Support Temporal Work Across Meetings with Generative AI
Attention
- Multitasking in meetings: Large Scale Analysis of Multitasking Behavior During Remote Meetings
- Attention in meetings. Classification of Functional Attention in Video Meetings | Low Engagement As a Deliberate Practice of Remote Participants in Video Meetings
Meetings during COVID-19
- Meeting (the) Pandemic: Videoconferencing Fatigue and Evolving Tensions of Sociality in Enterprise Video Meetings During COVID-19
- Collaboration and Meetings – Chapter 1 of the 2021 New Future of Work report | Bridging social distance during social distancing: Exploring social talk and remote collegiality in video conferencing
Meeting affordances
Hybrid and remote meeting paradigms
Prototype studies
- Hybridge: Bridging Spatiality for Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meetings
- Comparing the Agency of Hybrid Meeting Remote Users in 2D and 3D Interfaces of the Hybridge System
- An Equal Seat at the Table: Exploring Videoconferencing with Shared Spatial Context combined with 3D Video Representations
- Perspectives: Creating Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meeting Experiences
Formative studies
- (Re)Configuring Hybrid Meetings: Moving from User-Centered Design to Meeting-Centered Design
- Hybrid Meetings in the Modern Workplace: Stories of Success and Failure
Avatars
Prototype studies
- Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting Outcomes and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing
- Nice is Different than Good: Longitudinal Communicative Effects of Realistic and Cartoon Avatars in Real Mixed Reality Work Meetings
Formative studies
Specialized affordances
Prototype studies
- Semantic Devices: Beyond Audio: Towards a Design Space of Headphones as a Site for Interaction and Sensing
- Conversational Transitions: Making Space for Social Time: Supporting Conversational Transitions Before, During, and After Video Meetings
- Post-meeting dashboard: MeetingCoach: An Intelligent Dashboard for Supporting Effective and Inclusive Meetings
- Speech overlap in meetings: Automated mapping of competitive and collaborative overlapping talk in video meetings
Formative studies
- Meeting chat: Virtual Voices: Exploring Individual Differences in Written and Verbal Participation in Meetings | The Promise and Peril of Parallel Chat in Video Meetings for Work
- Spatial audio: Hear We Are: Spatial Audio Benefits Perceptions of Turn-Taking and Social Presence in Video Meetings
Robotic Telepresence
Prototype studies
- Belonging There: VROOM-ing into the Uncanny Valley of XR Telepresence
- TableBot: Getting a Handle on Hybrid Collaboration by Negotiating Control of a Tabletop Telepresence Robot
Case studies