Collaboration Resilience: Technology as a Resource for New Patterns of Action

Student: Bryan Semaan, UC Irvine/ISR

Advisor: Gloria Mark, UC Irvine/ISR

Abstract:

In CSCW, there has been little or no attention given to how people use technology to restore collaborations when there is a major environmental disruption. We are especially interested in studying collaboration resilience - the extent to which people continue to collaborate with work groups or continue to socialize despite such a disruption. We conducted an empirical study of people living in two countries that experienced prolonged disruption in their work and personal lives. We discovered that technology played a major role in providing people with alternative resources to reconstruct, modify, and develop new routines, or patterns of action, for work and socializing. People created new assemblages of technological and physical resources. We argue that the ability to flexibly assemble and switch among technological and physical resources is what we consider to be collaboration resilience.

Bio:

Bryan Semaan is a third year PhD student in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer science at the University of California, Irvine, where he is being advised by Dr. Gloria Mark. His general research interests are in the areas of CSCW, HCI and Software Engineering. More specifically, he is interested in how technology is used on a global level to help people communicate and coordinate work, how technology is used as a facilitator of inter-cultural interaction, and the effects of technology on culture. He is currently studying how technology is used to help ameliorate the effects of environmental disruptions, and is currently focusing on people living in Iraq.