This article presents Second Messenger, a system of dynamic awareness displays that reveal speaker participation patterns in a face-to-face discussion. The system has been used by a variety of groups during face-to-face meetings, increasing individuals ’ awareness of their own and others ’ participation in discussions. Experimental results indicate that these displays influence the amount an individual participates in a discussion and the process of information sharing used during a decision-making task. These findings suggest that awareness applications bring about systematic changes in group communication styles, highlighting the potential for such applications to be designed to improve group interactions. Joan DiMicco is an HCI researcher interested in human–human communication; she is a researcher at IBM Research in Cambridge, MA. Katherine Hollenbach is an undergraduate at MIT with an interest in computer science and design; she is an undergraduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab. Anna

During face-to-face interactions, groups frequently overly rely on the dominant viewpoint to lead the group in its decision-making process. We begin with a discussion of this phenomenon and the possibility for technology to assist in addressing it. We then present findings from a behavioral study that examines how a shared display of individual speaker-participation rates can impact the behavior of the group during a collaboration task. The results from the study indicate that the presence of such a display influences the behavior of group participants in the extremes of over and under participation. While influencing the quantity of time someone speaks is not directly equivalent to influencing the topics discussed, we suggest that this approach of providing peripheral displays of social information is promising for improving certain types of group interactions.