The connection of the style of interactions and the collaboration in a virtual work environment

Abstract

Nowadays it is becoming common for more and more people to work remotely in an online virtual space. Even the virtual presence of the partner means a difference in quality when engaged in a cooperative task. The purpose of this paper is to analyze social interactions in a virtual workspace. Earlier researches about the psychological features of online, remote, and virtual collaborations are also summarized. The research task replicates the process of creating an interesting holiday plan for tourists visiting Budapest. In the virtual tourist office, there are posters and a map available for the participants to create a feasible schedule for two days. The research was conducted in the VirCA (3D Virtual Collaboration Area), and includes a total of 12 analyses of dialogs recorded during the task. In completion of that, the participants' prior experiences and subjective impressions of the experiment are also measured. The efficiency of task output as a quality measure was compared with the dialogs' content analysis. The task completion time showed a strong positive correlation with the utterance category of coordination and also showed a strong but negative correlation with utterances of information sharing. The assertiveness had no connection with the efficiency index number, which was calculated by us. Results may provide a solid basis to gain better insight into the question of designing and planning task- and goal-specific communication. Conclusions may also bring guidance on how to use the virtual space more efficiently, making it more productive to collaborate.