Research published in Feb 2007′s Computer Standards & Interfaces shows more ideas are generated by virtual teams when using IM than when using email – or at least that’s what the abstract says.

but when you read the article, you realise the research (subjects = grad biz students) really showed one extra idea for IM than with email which suggests IM might be more beneficial than email for idea generation. not a very strong result.

there wasn’t any significant difference btwn the task satisfaction of the 2 groups, nor was there any difference in ‘user playfulness’. hence IM can be used as a serious business tool and people are satisfied with both options. that’s good information but i hesitate to say IM is better for idea generation than email just based on this research.

article details:
An exploratory investigation of two internet-based communication modes
Albert H. Huanga, Shin-Yuan Hungb and David C. Yenc

Abstract
Instant messaging (IM) was first introduced in the late 1990s. It has a relatively short history of adoption compared to other electronic media such as e-mail. In the first few years, the majority of IM users were teenagers. Only a relatively small portion of adult Internet users used IM. Recently as the young IM users gradually enter the workforce, an increasing popularity of IM among working professionals is expected. Consequently, the use of IM in the workplace for job-related task becomes more likely. The potential impact of IM will also become a more important organizational issue. This study compares the use of IM versus e-mail as the communication tool to facilitate group task for geographically dispersed teams. An experiment using 44 teams in the United States was conducted. The results show that teams using e-mail are more effective in terms of generating ideas than teams using IM. There are no significance differences between the two communication methods, in terms of task difficulty, playfulness, and ease of use.

a post (and experiment) on the underuse of online collaboration & conversation tools by dave pollard.

dave also has a fantastic decision tree to help you decide what technology you should use to communicate.

in the underuse article, dave asks the following questions, puts them on writely & asks for people to go there to edit/answer. he said he granted permission to 31 people but only 12 participated.

1. Why are conversation and collaboration tools so underused? Is my list of 7 reasons missing anything? Are any of the reasons predominant?
2. Is the answer making the tools better? If so, how? If not, what is the answer?
3. Given time, do you think people will eventually learn to use these tools, despite their shortcomings? Which tools, current or envisioned, will be the winners, the killer apps for online-enabled conversation and collaboration, and why?
4. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better conversationalists, and how would we do this?
5. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better collaborators, and how would we do this?

. personally i think tools are underused because people don’t know about them or are afraid of them or just don’t understand what the benefit could be. i think a lot of the tools could be better (and they will get better). i recently experimented with a wiki during a project at work. there were definite benefits to using it, there was resistance to using the technology, and even though i think the technology was pretty damned good, i saw definite places it could have been more user friendly .

i think several of the contributors to that post make very valid points re: generational differences. the usage of collaboration type items makes the newer generation not only more computer savvy but also willing to share (instead of the ‘i produced this’ mindset of other generations).

interesting article on the rise of IM popularity over email usage. it touches on the generation gap of older folks not used to spreading them across several conversations of IM, how IM is the ultimate in having communication but not really having to ‘deal’ with the person you’re IMing and the immediacy of the medium. there’s 2 really great quotes i want to highlight –

“Like parents, they try to control their children,” she says. “But companies really need to respond to the way people work and communicate.”

this from anne kirah (senior design anthropologist at microsoft). she’s talking about companies and how younger generations work differently. this is going to be a huge topic of research as time goes on and, i think, a real shake up for business. i recently had a conversation with a friend who said all their graduate folks are very different to what they were several years ago. how these kids think they can take over everything (which i think can be said about every graduating class) and they have a real sense of not needing to work for anything, everything being handed to them – a real sense of entitlement. i think that added on to the technology culture is going to shake things up a lot.

“In this world of instant gratification, e-mail has become the new snail mail,” says 25-year-old Rachel Quizon from Norwalk, California. She became addicted to instant messaging in college, where many students are logged on 24/7.

Much like home postal boxes have become receptacles for junk mail, bills and the occasional greeting card, electronic mailboxes have become cluttered with spam. That makes them a pain to weed through, and the problem is only expected to worsen as some e-mail providers allow online marketers to bypass spam filters for a fee.

i love the idea of comparing junk mail/post boxes with email. it’s such a great mental picture of how email sucks for collaboration or working with multiple people.

complore is a research collaboration tool targeted at academics. it’s in beta & according to their blog only been around a few months.

there’s ‘my notebook’ which focuses on your research. you can easily bookmark articles (or whatever) you find on the web and it will sit in your notebook. you can also post about conferences or whatever. you can have a bookmark list. you can upload files. it was unclear in the tour and from the feature list/FAQ, just how much control you have over my notebook & keeping some details public & some private.

complore is also a yahoo/google group model. you join complore groups & group admins can set how open they want their membership (ie do people need to be approved?). there are forums where you can talk to others who have joined the particular complore group. as the creators of the software are going for the academic market, the profile is heavy on what your education is. i haven’t seen an academically focused group before (though there is a social networking site, academici, focused in this area).

i’m not sure if i’m missing the connection between the ‘my notebook’ and the groups or maybe there isn’t one as complore seems like 2 separate tools to me.

the collaborative group side is something most people would be familiar with and having features that appeal to the academic market is great. but i can’t see ‘my notebook’ being used for the heavy lifting that academics doing research need. there’s no integration with software such as endnote. and there’s very little chance (IMO) someone will add details to endnote & then copy it all into ‘my notebook’. it also doesn’t go the other way.. if i bookmark a webpage in ‘my notebook’, there doesn’t seem to be a way to push the details into my research software. and i can’t get a reference/source list formatted into harvard (or whichever) style.

from what’s there currently (and i’m sure it will change), ‘my notebook’ feels more like what a high school or maybe undergrad student would use (and find valuable). the group software is definitely more interesting to higher level academics.

the 3rd international conference on communities and technologies june 2007. papers due nov 2006. michigan state uni.