1. Introduction
Meetings are often considered as the fuel of
an organization’s productivity. Employees
come together for a common purpose to
discuss ideas, to make collective decisions, and
to ultimately reach their objectives.
However, it is no secret that meetings are
often seen as wasteful vacuums, or as an
enemy of productivity. Although there are
good meetings and bad meetings, their
collective negative impact on employee morale
and productivity is significant [
1
]. To
moderate this, organizations devote notably large
amounts of resources to facilitate and
support them. While meeting tools pledge to
facilitate better meetings—ones that are
wellexecuted, and create a safe environment for
contribution—yet report after report estimate
a growth of inefective meetings 1; numbers
though that are bound to change, if meeting
tools were to fully capture people’s meetings
experience. Recently, in a large-scale
crowdsourcing study [
2
], researchers determined
the main factors that impact people’s
meetings experience. They administered a
28item questionnaire to 363 individuals whose
answers were statistically analyzed through
Principal Component Analysis, and found
that three factors suficiently capture
people’s experience in meetings, namely, (a)
execution, (b) physical comfort, and (c)
psychological safety. Put diferently, these factors
capture the extent to which (a) people feel
that a meeting was productive, (b) the
meeting room was pleasant, and (c) the setting
was psychologically safe.
1https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2019/01/
30/report-suggests-that-23rds-of-the-100-billion-spent
-annually-on-business-meetings-travel-is-wasted
2. Capturing psychological safety
Current meeting tools, however, primarily
focus on enabling participants to “get things
done” (i.e., execution), or on optimizing the
environmental conditions (i.e., physical com- Psychological safety is about whether
parfort). Execution is about whether a meet- ticipants felt listened to, or motivated to be
ing had a clear structure, purpose, and re- part of a meeting. Edmondson described it
sulted into a list of actionable items; a large “as the absence of interpersonal fear that
albody of previous research focused on these lows people to speak up with work-relevant
aspects. Kim and Rudin [
3
] developed a sys- content” [
11
]. Previous research showed that
tem that detects key decisions in dialogues, inclusiveness and balance of conversational
while McGregor and Tang [
4
]’s system gen- turn-taking play an important role in group
erates an ‘action items’ list from the spoken performance [
12
]. Tools have been
develdialogue. Using an agenda planning tech- oped to create awareness by highlighting
nique, Garcia et al. [
5
] allowed meetings par- salient moments during conversations [
13
],
ticipants to vote for agendas to improve per- to enhance group collaboration through
perceived meeting quality. Video Threads [
6
] suasive feedback [
14
], and to allow
participrovides asynchronous video sharing, while pants to reflect on their own and their peers’
Time Travel Proxy [
7
] identifies the gist of experiences [
15
]. Although such tools, to
what was missed to enable late participa- some extent, ofer features that facilitate
extion efectively. Physical comfort is about ecution and support physical comfort, they
whether the meeting room was pleasant (in often fall short in enabling psychological
regard to air quality and crowdedness). In safety. We argue that a more
interdisciHuman-Building Interaction literature [
8
], plinary approach would likely benefit the
poor environmental conditions are known to creation of new tools designed for
supportimpact employees’ cognitive functions, de- ing psychological safety. To achieve that, we
cision making, and performance. There- foresee a number of challenges and
opportufore, organizations have resorted to sensors nities, ranging from sensing to modeling to
through which the environmental conditions user interface (UI) design.
could be sensed [
2, 9
], and even adapted ac- Sensing. New emerging sensing devices
cordingly [
10
] to meet recommended stan- such as earables [
16
] are now fully equipped
dards, thus increasing their employees’ pro- with IMU (inertial measurement unit)
senductivity and well-being. To this end, meet- sors, allowing on-body and on-device
sensing tools could account for physical comfort ing. This opens up a new avenue for
meetin their design, potentially in a form of inter- ing tools by allowing participants to
monventions (e.g., adjusting ventilation). How- itor signals that could otherwise go
unever, the design space should not only facilitate noticed; for example, capturing body cues
execution and ensure that desirable physical of (dis)agreement or (in)active
participaenvironmental conditions are met, but should tion during a virtual conversation when the
also cultivate a psychologically safe setting. video stream is absent [
17
]. Similarly,
smartwatches are now fully equipped with heart
rate sensors that provide a window to
people’s physiology, allowing one to track their
own or their peers’ emotional states [
18
];
aspects that are closely linked to creating a safe
environment for contribution. Additionally, and empathic of each other [24].
Borrowin the future, we foresee that better precision ing ideas from calm technology [25] and
biodevices would enable more nuanced non- philic design, meeting tools could embrace
verbal or verbal communication patterns to new types of cues only available through
be captured. technology [26]. For example, the use of
dif
Modeling. New algorithms are also ferent symbols, imagery, and artificial
artilikely to provide a new understanding and facts (e.g., real-world objects [27], light [28],
perspective that would help further theorize or movement 2) could augment the ways we
the concept of psychological safety. New interact and communicate with each other.
Natural Language Processing text-mining These new visualizations could bring teams
algorithms [
19
] are now able to reveal certain together despite working apart, and remove
language markers that might be deeply any geographical barriers due to physical
dishidden in a conversation, particularly in tancing.
a remote setting. These algorithms can Workplace surveillance. While this
inannotate everyday language and capture terdisciplinary approach promises to deliver
important types of social interactions (e.g., experiences richer of psychological safety,
a heated discussion resulting in conflict it also raises questions relating to
workresolution). NLP-based algorithms can now place surveillance. It is often regarded that
analyze conversations and test whether these organizations and surveillance go hand in
conversations accommodate diferent points hand [29]. On a very pragmatic level, there
of view [
20
], or even reveal the presence (or is a handful of reasons as to why
organiabsence) of certain health-related markers zations opt in for employees’ surveillance
(e.g., stress markers) [21]. Additionally, new (e.g. maintaining productivity, monitoring
Natural Sound Processing algorithms [22] resources used, protecting the organization
are now able to model verbal cues (e.g., from legal liabilities). The critics, however,
prosody) that would potentially enable richer rightly argue that there is a fine line between
and more focused interactions. For example, what organizations could be monitoring and
prosodic features (e.g., pitch and energy) what they should be monitoring. If crossed, it
are known to provide a reliable indication will have consequences on employees,
afectof the emotional status in a conversational ing their well-being, work culture, and
proexchange. ductivity. If future meetings tools
incorpo
UI design. Last but not least, new oppor- rate any kind of employees’ monitoring, they
tunities are likely to arise for the UI design need to ensure that is done in a way that
precommunity. New visualizations are more serves an individual’s rights, including that
likely to be (re)invented, beyond dashboards of privacy.
and simple analytics [23]. Drawing from be- The workplace is constantly changing
havioral economics research, we foresee that and evolving. These changes are currently
new forms of interventions would allow peo- accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic,
ple to be more empathetic, compassionate, which might be leading to a dramatic change
and aware of each other’s emotional states, in how we work: from the well-known
views, and thoughts. Previous research in the eight-hour workday to the ofice building
area of organizational behavior showed that to the salient boundaries between work and
afective sharing within groups conveys our personal life. Meetings are no exception
internal experiences, signals our emotional
states and, potentially, makes us more aware 2Blooming: http://www.thelisapark.com/blooming
to this sudden change. In a post-pandemic
world, we envision that new sensing devices
would provide access to employees’ data
that otherwise might not be possible to
collect (e.g., on-body sensing); that new
algorithms would ‘make sense’ of such
data, and capture behavioral aspects that
are hard to quantify (e.g., (dis)agreement,
empathy, or stress markers); and that new
user interfaces (e.g., inspired by biophilic
design) would enable meeting participants
to stay connected despite any geographical
or technological barriers due to remote
working.