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CO-Coffee: A Technology Probe Study to Facilitate Coffee Breaks in Open Offices

Published: 11 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Coffee breaks serve as a good opportunity for workers to break up sedentary work and socialize with their colleagues. In this paper, we present a technology probe study using CO-Coffee, a sociotechnical system designed to encourage mutual invitation between coworkers for drinking coffee and visualize the process of each social break in an open office. The one-week probe study was conducted in three workplaces with 28 office workers to gain some qualitative insights into usage patterns and user experiences with CO-Coffee. Our results revealed how this probe facilitated coffee breaks in different working contexts and how participants established rituals around CO-Coffee to engage in break times. We emphasized the importance of positive workplace norms on break-taking behaviors and discussed design implications for reshaping workplace ambiance to encourage active and equal participations in break times.

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References

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  1. CO-Coffee: A Technology Probe Study to Facilitate Coffee Breaks in Open Offices

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2024
    4761 pages
    ISBN:9798400703317
    DOI:10.1145/3613905
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 11 May 2024

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    Author Tags

    1. Office vitality
    2. coffee break
    3. social interactions
    4. technology probe

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    • Work in progress
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    Funding Sources

    • Xiaomi Young Talents Program Research Grant
    • The National Social Science Foundation of China

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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