Informal communication in organizations has many benefits, but people who are not native speakers of the organization's common language may find it hard to interact informally. In an interview study of nine native English-speaking and 33 non-native English-speaking students at a large U.S. university, we explore how native language shapes patterns of informal interaction. We found that non-native speakers generally preferred interacting informally with fellow speakers of their own native language as opposed to native English speakers, which hinders communication and collaboration between groups. Three factors led to this "clustering" effect: issues of common ground, feelings of social obligation to other speakers of one's native language, and desires to build social networks within a language group. Four factors led to greater motivation for cross-language interaction: a desire to build bridging capital, physical proximity, one-on-one or small-group interaction, and an established work relationship. The findings suggest ways that communication tools might reduce barriers to informal interaction between speakers of different native languages.

In this paper we describe two studies intended to replicate earlier work comparing American and Chinese communication in a negotiation task using several different media. In the earlier studies, the participants all spoke in English, raising the question of whether differences in fluency rather than differences in cultural background explained the results. We replicated the earlier studies using materials translated into Chinese, a native Chinese-speaking experimenter, and native Chinese participants. Counts of Chinese characters in each media show nearly the identical pattern found in the earlier studies, suggesting that cultural differences in communication styles, rather than fluency, account for the earlier findings. We describe implications of this work for tools to support intercultural communication.

In recent years, a growing number of studies examining how culture shapes computer-mediated communication (CMC) have appeared in the CHI and CSCW literature. Findings from these studies reveal that cultural differences exist, but no clear underlying explanation can account for results across studies. We describe several limitations of the theoretical frameworks used to motivate many of the prior studies over the past decade, most notably the assumption that tasks and media used in these studies are perceived similarly by participants from different cultural backgrounds. We then describe an interview study in which we asked 22 participants from America, Korea, India and China about their perceptions of media and motivations for media choices in different hypothetical settings. The results suggest cultural differences in how media are perceived, specifically, that the ability for media to support social in addition to task processes is more important for participants from China, Korea and India than for participants from the U.S. We conclude with some recommendations for enhancing CMC theories to account for cultural differences.

Supporting creativity via collaborative group brainstorming is a prevalent practice in organizations. Today's technology makes it easy for international and intercultural group members to brainstorm together remotely, but surprisingly little is known about how culture and medium shape the underlying brainstorming process. In a laboratory study, we examined the influences of individual cultural background (American versus Chinese), group cultural composition (same- versus mixed-culture groups), and communication medium (text-only versus video-enabled chatrooms) on group brainstorming conversations. Cultural differences and adaptation in conversational talkativeness and responsiveness were identified. The text-only medium reduced cultural differences in talkativeness. Working in a mixed-culture group led to cultural adaptation in the communication style of Chinese but not American participants. We discuss implications for international group brainstorming.

We explored anthropomorphism in people's reactions to a robot in social context vs. their more considered judgments of robots in the abstract. Participants saw a photo and read transcripts from a health interview by a robot or human interviewer. For half of the participants, the interviewer was polite and for the other half, the interviewer was impolite. Participants then summarized the interactions in their own words and responded true or false to adjectives describing the interviewer. They later completed a post-task survey about whether a robot interviewer would possess moods, attitudes, and feelings. The results showed substantial anthropomorphism in participants' interview summaries and true-false responses, but minimal anthropomorphism in the abstract robot survey. Those who interacted with the robot interviewer tended to anthropomorphize more in the post-task survey, suggesting that as people interact more with robots, their abstract conceptions of them will become more anthropomorphic.

Information technologies have the potential to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration, but this potential may be limited by different styles of IT use in different cultures. We report the results of a preliminary study and a larger follow-up study that focus on the use of Instant Messaging (IM) in North America and Asia. Consistent with the distinction between Western individualistic, low-context cultures and Eastern collectivistic, high-context cultures, we found that multi-party chat, audio-video chat and emoticons were much more popular in Asia than in North America. We conclude that cultural differences should be taken into consideration when designing tools for cross-cultural communication.

We present a study of the effects of instant messaging (IM) on individuals' management of work across multiple collaborative projects. Groups of four participants completed four web design tasks. Each participant worked on two tasks, each task with a different partner who was either co-located or remote, connected via IM. In one condition, each participant had one co-located and one remote partner. In a second condition, both partners were remote. We examined communication, division of labor, and task performance as a function of condition. The results indicated that nearly all participants divided their time unequally between projects, but less unequally in the remote/remote condition. In the co-located/remote condition, participants favored the task with the co-located partner. The results show that the effects of IM differ depending on people's multiple tasks are distributed across space. We propose a new IM interface that promotes awareness of multiple collaborators on multiple tasks.

As new communications media foster international collaborations, we would be remiss in overlooking cultural differences when assessing them. In this study, 24 pairs in three cultural groupings--American-American (AA), Chinese-Chinese (CC) and American-Chinese (AC) --worked on two decision-making tasks, one face-to-face and the other via IM. Drawing upon prior research, we predicted differences in conversational efficiency, conversational content, interaction quality, persuasion, and performance. The quantitative results combined with conversation analysis suggest that the groups viewed the task differently--AA pairs as an exercise in situation-specific compromise; CC as consensus-reaching. Cultural differences were reduced but not eliminated in the IM condition.

This article considers tools to support remote gesture in video systems being used to complete collaborative physical tasks-tasks in which two or more individuals work together manipulating three-dimensional objects in the real world. We first discuss the process of conversational grounding during collaborative physical tasks, particularly the role of two types of gestures in the grounding process: pointing gestures, which are used to refer to task objects and locations, and representational gestures, which are used to represent the form of task objects and the nature of actions to be used with those objects. We then consider ways in which both pointing and representational gestures can be instantiated in systems for remote collaboration on physical tasks. We present the results of two studies that use a "surrogate" approach to remote gesture, in which images are intended to express the meaning of gestures through visible embodiments, rather than direct views of the hands. In Study 1, we compare performance with a cursor-based pointing device that allows remote partners to point to objects in a video feed of the work area to performance side-by-side or with the video system alone. In Study 2, we compare performance with two variations of a pen-based drawing tool that allows for both pointing and representational gestures to performance with video alone. The results suggest that simple surrogate gesture tools can be used to convey gestures from remote sites, but that the tools need to be able to convey representational as well as pointing gestures to be effective. The results further suggest that an automatic erasure function, in which drawings disappear a few seconds after they were created, is more beneficial for collaboration than tools requiring manual erasure. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the results, as well as several areas for future research.

This study assessed the value of two video configurations-a head-mounted camera with eye tracking capability and a scene camera providing a view of the work environment-on remote collaboration on physical (3D) tasks. Pairs of participants performed five robot construction tasks in five media conditions: side-by-side, audio-only, head-mounted camera, scene camera, and scene plus head cameras. Task completion times were shortest in the side-by-side condition, and shorter with the scene camera than in the audio-only condition. Participants rated their work quality highest when side-by-side, intermediate with the scene camera, and worst in the audio-only and head-camera conditions. Similarly, helpers' self-rated ability to assist workers and pairs' communication efficiency were highest in the side-by-side condition, but significantly higher with the scene camera than in the audio-only condition. The results demonstrate the value of a shared view of the work environment for remote collaboration on physical tasks.

We present a system integrating gesture and live video to support collaboration on physical tasks. The architecture combines network IP cameras, desktop PCs, and tablet PCs to allow a remote helper to draw on a video feed of a workspace as he/she provides task instructions. A gesture recognition component enables the system both to normalize freehand drawings to facilitate communication with remote partners and to use pen-based input as a camera control device. Results of a preliminary user study suggest that our gesture over video communication system enhances task performance over traditional video-only systems. Implications for the design of multimodal systems to support collaborative physical tasks are also discussed.