research-article

The architecture of innovation: tracking face-to-face interactions with ubicomp technologies

Authors:

Christos Efstratiou,

Ilias Leontiadis,

Daniele Quercia,

Cecilia Mascolo,

Peter KeyAuthors Info & Claims

UbiComp '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

Pages 811 - 822

https://doi.org/10.1145/2632048.2632056

Published: 13 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The layouts of the buildings we live in shape our everyday lives. In office environments, building spaces affect employees' communication, which is crucial for productivity and innovation. However, accurate measurement of how spatial layouts affect interactions is a major challenge and traditional techniques may not give an objective view.

We measure the impact of building spaces on social interactions using wearable sensing devices. We study a single organization that moved between two different buildings, affording a unique opportunity to examine how space alone can affect interactions. The analysis is based on two large scale deployments of wireless sensing technologies: short-range, lightweight RFID tags capable of detecting face-to-face interactions. We analyze the traces to study the impact of the building change on social behavior, which represents a first example of using ubiquitous sensing technology to study how the physical design of two workplaces combines with organizational structure to shape contact patterns.

Supplementary Material

MOV File (p811-brown.mov)

Download
93.00 MB

References

[1]

Allen, T. J., and Henn, G. The organization and architecture of innovation: Managing the flow of technology. Routledge, 2006.

[2]

Blondel, V. D., Guillaume, J.-L., Lambiotte, R., and Lefebvre, E. Fast unfolding of communities in large networks. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2008, 10 (2008), P10008.

[3]

Bradburn, N. M., Sudman, S., Blair, E., and Stocking, C. Question threat and response bias. Public Opinion Quarterly 42, 2 (1978).

[4]

Burt, R. S. Structural holes and good ideas. American journal of sociology 110, 2 (2004).

[5]

Cattuto, C., Van den Broeck, W., Barrat, A., Colizza, V., Pinton, J.-F., and Vespignani, A. Dynamics of person-to-person interactions from distributed RFID sensor networks. PLoS ONE 5, 7 (2010).

[6]

Congdon, C., and Gall, C. How culture shapes the office. Harvard Business Review 91, 3 (2013).

[7]

Derényi, I., Palla, G., and Vicsek, T. Clique percolation in random networks. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94 (2005).

[8]

Efstratiou, C., Leontiadis, I., Picone, M., Rachuri, K., Mascolo, C., and Crowcroft, J. Sense and sensibility in a pervasive world. In Pervasive Computing (2012).

Digital Library

[9]

Fortunato, S. Community detection in graphs. Physics Reports 486 (2010).

[10]

Granovetter, M. The strength of weak ties. American journal of sociology 78, 6 (1973).

[11]

Henn, S. 'Serendipitous Interaction' Key to Tech Firms' Workplace Design. all tech considered (NPR blogs): http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/03/13/174195695 (2013). Accessed 19 Feb 2014.

[12]

Isaacs, E. A., Tang, J. C., and Morris, T. Piazza: a desktop environment supporting impromptu and planned interactions. In CSCW, ACM (1996).

Digital Library

[13]

Kirkham, R., Mellor, S., Green, D., Lin, J.-S., Ladha, K., Ladha, C., Jackson, D., Olivier, P., Wright, P., and Ploetz, T. The break-time barometer: an exploratory system for workplace break-time social awareness. In UbiComp, ACM (2013).

Digital Library

[14]

Kraut, R. E., Fish, R. S., Root, R. W., and Chalfonte, B. L. Informal communication in organizations: Form, function, and technology. In Human reactions to technology: Claremont symposium on applied social psychology (1990).

[15]

Mark, G., Iqbal, S., Czerwinski, M., and Johns, P. Capturing the mood: Facebook and face-to-face encounters in the workplace. In CSCW, ACM (2014).

Digital Library

[16]

Newman, M. E. Modularity and community structure in networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 23 (2006).

[17]

Olguín-Olguín, D., Waber, B. N., Kim, T., Mohan, A., Ara, K., and Pentland, A. Sensible organizations: Technology and methodology for automatically measuring organizational behavior. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics 39, 1 (2009).

Digital Library

[18]

Panisson, A., Barrat, A., Cattuto, C., Van Den Broeck, W., Ruffo, G., and Schifanella, R. On the dynamics of human proximity for data diffusion in ad-hoc networks. Ad Hoc Networks (2011).

Digital Library

[19]

Penn, A., Desyllas, J., and Vaughan, L. The space of innovation: interaction and communication in the work environment. Environment and Planning B 26 (1999).

[20]

Pentland, A. The new science of building great teams. Harvard Business Review 90, 4 (2012).

[21]

Rogers, Y., Hazlewood, W. R., Marshall, P., Dalton, N., and Hertrich, S. Ambient influence: Can twinkly lights lure and abstract representations trigger behavioral change? In Ubicomp, ACM (2010).

Digital Library

[22]

Sailer, K., and McCulloh, I. Social networks and spatial configurationhow office layouts drive social interaction. Social Networks 34, 1 (2011).

[23]

Stryker, J. B., and Santoro, M. D. Facilitating face-to-face communication in high-tech teams. Research-Technology Management 55, 1 (2012).

[24]

Toker, U., and Gray, D. O. Innovation spaces: Workspace planning and innovation in US university research centers. Research Policy 37, 2 (2008).

[25]

Waber, B., Olguin Olguin, D., Kim, T., and Pentland, A. Productivity through coffee breaks: Changing social networks by changing break structure. Available at SSRN 1586375 (2010).

[26]

Want, R., Hopper, A., Falcao, V., and Gibbons, J. The active badge location system. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 10, 1 (1992).

Digital Library

[27]

Whyte, W. F. Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. University of Chicago Press, 1943.

[28]

Wu, L., Waber, B., Aral, S., Brynjolfsson, E., and Pentland, A. Mining face-to-face interaction networks using sociometric badges: Predicting productivity in an IT configuration task. Available at SSRN 1130251 (2008).

Cited By

Atrey AZakaria CBalan RShenoy P(2024)W4-Groups: Modeling the Who, What, When and Where of Group Behavior via Mobility SensingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374278:CSCW1(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637427
Mandhana DBallard D(2024)Navigating the clock and the corridor: how time and space influence unplanned conversationsCorporate Communications: An International Journal10.1108/CCIJ-06-2023-008929:5(753-768)Online publication date: 23-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-06-2023-0089
Kawakami AChowdhary SIqbal SLiao QOlteanu ASuh JSaha K(2023)Sensing Wellbeing in the Workplace, Why and For Whom? Envisioning Impacts with Organizational StakeholdersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36102077:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610207
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The architecture of innovation: tracking face-to-face interactions with ubicomp technologies

Recommendations

Assessing the SALSA architecture for developing agent-based ambient computing applications

We have proposed the use of autonomous agents for coping with some of the challenges of creating ambient computing systems. The motivation of this research is that ambient computing environments are characterized by the distribution, reactivity, ...
UbiPhone: Human-Centered Ubiquitous Phone System

Emerging rich wireless networking modalities facilitate the development of new intelligent, innovative services on smart phones. The authors propose a ubiquitous phone (UbiPhone) system that demonstrates innovative context-aware human-centric phone ...
Ubiquitous Computing: Are We There Yet?

The widespread deployment of technologies like mobile phones continues to drive new applications and to open research opportunities.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UbiComp '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing

September 2014

973 pages

ISBN:9781450329682

DOI:10.1145/2632048

General Chairs:
AJ Brush
Microsoft Research
,
Adrian Friday
Lancaster University, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Julie Kientz
University of Washington
,
James Scott
Microsoft Research, UK
,
Junehwa Song
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), KR

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

In-Cooperation

SIGSPATIAL: ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 September 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

UbiComp '14

Sponsor:

UbiComp '14: The 2014 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing

September 13 - 17, 2014

Washington, Seattle

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

61
Total Citations
View Citations
1,220
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)31
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 17 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Atrey AZakaria CBalan RShenoy P(2024)W4-Groups: Modeling the Who, What, When and Where of Group Behavior via Mobility SensingProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374278:CSCW1(1-29)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637427
Mandhana DBallard D(2024)Navigating the clock and the corridor: how time and space influence unplanned conversationsCorporate Communications: An International Journal10.1108/CCIJ-06-2023-008929:5(753-768)Online publication date: 23-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-06-2023-0089
Kawakami AChowdhary SIqbal SLiao QOlteanu ASuh JSaha K(2023)Sensing Wellbeing in the Workplace, Why and For Whom? Envisioning Impacts with Organizational StakeholdersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36102077:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610207
Van Den Heuvel RLallemand C(2023)Personal Informatics at the Office: User-Driven, Situated Sensor Kits in the WorkplaceProceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work10.1145/3596671.3598577(1-13)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3596671.3598577
Saha KIqbal S(2023)Focus Time: Effectiveness of Computer Assisted Protected Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information WorkersProceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work10.1145/3596671.3598571(1-13)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3596671.3598571
Mandhana D(2023)Multi-factor model of the antecedents of unplanned conversations at workInternational Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior10.1108/IJOTB-03-2023-005427:3(263-280)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-03-2023-0054
Minchella DCulié JDe Campos Ribeiro G(2023)Like an Elephant in the room: the emergence of informal interactions in the workplaceCulture and Organization10.1080/14759551.2023.221682829:6(528-547)Online publication date: 30-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2023.2216828
Javornik TKalabakov SŠvigelj A(2022)WiFi and BLE Fingerprinting for Smartphone Proximity Detection2022 6th European Conference on Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (ELECS)10.1109/ELECS55825.2022.00029(130-139)Online publication date: Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ELECS55825.2022.00029
Kalabakov SSvigelj AJavornik T(2022)Smartphone Proximity Detection Using WiFi and BLE Fingerprinting2022 International Balkan Conference on Communications and Networking (BalkanCom)10.1109/BalkanCom55633.2022.9900709(36-40)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/BalkanCom55633.2022.9900709
Zakaria CLee YBalan R(2021)Detection of Social Identification in Workgroups from a Passively-sensed WiFi InfrastructureProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491455:CSCW1(1-19)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3449145
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents