Designing to support People Working, Connecting and Living Well in Mobile Work Environments

Abstract

echnology is making it increasingly easier to connect, interact and work independent of traditional office spaces - work is becoming more mobile, more distributed in space and time. With this mobility comes a number of challenges. One is around how to be effective at/in work, to maintain motivation and productivity without the structures and oversight of work places. This requires people to operate with a high degree of autonomy and self-efficacy. And it requires new forms of leadership to enable such autonomy, provide appropriate support and to build trust. A second challenge is how to build and maintain high quality social connections in the absence of contemporaneous co-location. This is both for relationship building and for effective collaboration, creativity and problem solving. Strong social emotional skills are required to build and maintain relationships online, to create empathic connections, and to communicate effectively, often having to take more proactive and explicit steps for communications and interactions that could happen much more implicitly and serendipitously when co-located. A third challenge is about how to navigate time and space and work and all other aspects of life, often talked about in terms of blurring of boundaries. This can have both positive implications for increased flexibility and autonomy, mentioned above. It can also have negative implications for increasing stress and decreasing mental and physical health and well-being. In our human-centred research, we explore roles for technology to support reflective work practices, e.g., [3], to develop emotional and social skills, e.g., [2], and to promote mental and physical health and well-being, e.g., [1].