Keyang Zheng
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Improving virtual team collaboration has been a centerpiece of many computer mediated communication research efforts. Team collaboration presents unique challenges which are further exacerbated when such collaboration occurs in high-tempo environments that require “lean” communication affordances because they are not suited to traditional methods of rich communication such as text-based chat. Competitive multiplayer games can provide unique insights into how virtual teams communicate with limited communication affordance and under stress. In this work, we employed a mixed-method analysis of specific communication tools in a popular MOBA game Heroes of the Storm. Our study focuses on how players of the game use a gesturing communication system, called “Pings”, an example of lean communication affordance, to communicate within a team and its impact on team performance. We found that players appropriate the pings in distinct ways and exhibit different communication styles and these styles have different effects on the overall team performance. Our findings have implications for the design of emerging communication tools for virtual teams and can serve as guidelines to optimize communication in virtual teams.
- [1] . 1996. Content Analysis of Communication in a Hierarchical Navy Team.
Technical Report . Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
- [2] . 2015. Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour, Vol. 2045. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
- [3] . 1999. When is “nearest neighbor” meaningful?. In International Conference on Database Theory. Springer, 217–235.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [4] . 2019. Cues filtered in, cues filtered out, cues cute, and cues grotesque: Teaching mediated communication with emoji pictionary. Communication Teacher 33, 2 (2019), 127–131.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [5] . 2016. Implicit coordination strategies for effective team communication. Human Factors 58, 4 (2016), 595–610.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [6] . 2011. Team development and functioning. APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol 1: Building and Developing the Organization. 1 (2011), 597–650. Google ScholarCross Ref
- [7] . 1996. Using Language. Cambridge University Press.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [8] . 2015. Team cognition as interaction. Current Directions in Psychological Science 24, 6 (2015), 415–419.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [9] . 2000. Proactive behavior in organizations. Journal of Management 26, 3 (2000), 435–462.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [10] . 2018. Restricted and free-form cheap-talk and the scope for efficient coordination. Games Econ. Behav. 109 (
May 2018), 294–310.Google ScholarCross Ref - [11] . 2017. Heroes of the Storm Core Concepts: Battleground Basics. https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/20720248/.
Accessed: 2019-11-17. Google Scholar - [12] . 2017. Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes — January 24, 2017. https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/20481262 /.
Accessed: 2019-11-17. Google Scholar - [13] . 2000. Organizational Structure and Adaptation in the Joint Command and Control Domain.
Technical Report . TR-915, Burlington, MA: Alphatech.Google Scholar - [14] . 2000. Coordinating expertise in software development teams. Management Science 46, 12 (2000), 1554–1568.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [15] . 2006. Coordination in fast-response organizations. Management Science 52, 8 (2006), 1155–1169.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [16] . 2017. Distinguishing technologies for social interaction: The perceived social affordances of communication channels scale. Communication Monographs 84, 3 (2017), 298–318.
arXiv:https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2017.1332418 Google ScholarCross Ref - [17] . 2019. Understanding eSports team formation and coordination. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 28, 1–2 (2019), 95–126.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [18] . 2004. Gestures over video streams to support remote collaboration on physical tasks. Human-Computer Interaction 19, 3 (2004), 273–309.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [19] . 2007. Environmentally coupled gestures. Gesture and the Dynamic Dimensions of Language (2007), 195–212.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [20] (2002). A descriptive framework of workspace awareness for real-time groupware. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 11 ([n. d.]).Google ScholarDigital Library
- [21] . 1996. A usability study of awareness widgets in a shared workspace groupware system. (1996).Google Scholar
- [22] . 2012. Enhancing team performance through effective communication. In Proceedings of the 4th Annual Human-Agent-Robot Teamwork Workshop. 1–2.Google Scholar
- [23] . 1993. Implementing gesturing with cursors in group support systems. Journal of Management Information Systems 10, 3 (1993), 43–61.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [24] . 1993. Integration of interpersonal space and shared workspace: ClearBoard design and experiments. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 11, 4 (1993), 349–375.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [25] . 2015. Mechanics of camera work in mobile video collaboration. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 957–966.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [26] . 1993. Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. In From Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Meeting Workshop: Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis (ESDA). Making Sense of Observational Data. HFES: Santa Monica: CA.Google Scholar
- [27] . 2014. Playing with strangers: Understanding temporary teams in League of Legends. In Proceedings of the First ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 161–169.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [28] . [n.d.]. Ping to win?: Non-verbal communication and team performance in competitive online multiplayer games. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI’16 (2016). ACM Press, 4337–4350. Google ScholarDigital Library
- [29] . 2004. Communication overhead: The hidden cost of team cognition. (2004).Google Scholar
- [30] . 2005. How swift starting action teams get off the ground: What United Flight 232 and airline flight crews can tell us about team communication. Manage. Commun. Q. 19, 2 (
Nov. 2005), 198–237.Google ScholarCross Ref - [31] . 2009. Cultural differences in decision making in project teams. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (2009).Google ScholarCross Ref
- [32] . 2012. Algorithms for hierarchical clustering: An overview. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 2, 1 (2012), 86–97.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [33] . 2006. Human-centered design meets cognitive load theory: Designing interfaces that help people think. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Multimedia. 871–880.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [34] . 2004. When do we interact multimodally? Cognitive load and multimodal communication patterns. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces. 129–136.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [35] . 2011. Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python. Journal of Machine Learning Research 12 (2011), 2825–2830.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [36] . 2003. Acculturation, communication patterns, and self-esteem among Asian and Caucasian American adolescents. Adolescence 38, 152 (2003).Google Scholar
- [37] . 2010. An empirical analysis of team coordination behaviors and action planning with application to human–robot teaming. Human Factors 52, 2 (2010), 234–245.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [38] . 1993. Gesture as communication I: Its coordination with gaze and speech. Communications Monographs 60, 4 (1993), 275–299.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [39] . 2015. The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology, Vol. 32. John Wiley & Sons.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [40] . 2021. Less is more: Analysing communication in teams of strangers. In Proceedings of HICSS 54. eprints.whiterose.ac.uk, Proceedings of HICSS 54.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [41] . 2007. VideoArms: Embodiments for mixed presence groupware. In People and Computers XX-Engage. Springer, 85–102.Google Scholar
- [42] . 2013. Spontaneous virtual teams: Improving organizational performance through information and communication technology. Business Horizons 56, 3 (2013), 361–375.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [43] . 2014. A framework for cooperative communication game mechanics from grounded theory. In Proceedings of the First ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 257–266.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [44] . 2007. Implicit coordination in firefighting practice: Design implications for teaching fire emergency responders. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings (2007), 707–716. Google ScholarDigital Library
- [45] . 2006. Observational assessment of surgical teamwork: A feasibility study. World Journal of Surgery 30, 10 (
Oct. 2006), 1774–1783. Google ScholarCross Ref - [46] . 2002. Cues filtered out, cues filtered in: Computer-mediated communication and relationships. (
01 2002).Google Scholar - [47] . 1992. Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction: A relational perspective. Communication Research 19, 1 (1992), 52–90.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [48] . 1963. Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function. Journal of the American Statistical Association 58, 301 (1963), 236–244.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [49] . 2012. Trust development in swift starting action teams: A multilevel framework. Group & Organization Management 37, 2 (
April 2012), 137–170.Google ScholarCross Ref - [50] . 2012. Coordinated action in the massively multiplayer online game world of Warcraft. Symbolic Interaction 35, 3 (2012), 340–367.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [51] . 2018. A design framework for awareness cues in distributed multiplayer games. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–14.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [52] . 2017. Why players use pings and annotations in Dota 2. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1978–2018.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [53] . 2001. CAST: Collaborative agents for simulating teamwork. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 17. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd, 1135–1144.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Use Ping Wisely: A Study of Team Communication and Performance under Lean Affordance
Recommendations
Why Players use Pings and Annotations in Dota 2
CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsGroupware research has long focused on representing gestures as a means to facilitate collaboration. However, this work has not led to wide support of gesturing in commercial groupware systems. In contrast, Dota 2, a popular MOBA game, provides two ...
Ping to Win?: Non-Verbal Communication and Team Performance in Competitive Online Multiplayer Games
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsNon-verbal communication plays a large role in online competitive multiplayer games, as team members attempt to coordinate with each other without distraction to achieve victory. Some games enable this communication through "pings," alerts that are easy ...
Understanding Player’s Gesture-Based Communicative Behavior in MOBA Games
Prior research has shown that gesture-based communication plays an integral role in online multiplayer games, especially for teams consisting of strangers with no prior common experiences. What motivates a particular form of in-game communication and ...
Comments