Collocation blindness in partially distributed groups

Abstract

Under what circumstances might a group member be better off as a long-distance participant rather than collocated? We ran a set of experiments to study how partially-distributed groups collaborate when skill sets are unequally distributed. Partially distributed groups are those where some collaborators work together in the same space (collocated) and some work remotely using computer-mediated communications. Previous experiments had shown that these groups tend to form semi-autonomous 'in-groups'. In this set of experiments the configuration was changed so that some player skills were located only in the collocated space, and some were located only remotely, creating local surplus of some skills and local scarcity of others in the collocated room. Players whose skills were locally in surplus performed significantly worse. They experienced 'collocation blindness' and failed to pay enough attention to collaborators outside of the room. In contrast, the remote players whose skills were scarce inside the collocated room did particularly well because they charged a high price for their skills.