An Attentive Groupware Device to Mitigate Information Overload

We propose an attentive device for synchronous groupware systems to mitigate information overload. The opportunity seeker device leverages the users’ natural alternation between doing individual work and attending to the group to dynamically manage the delivery timing and quantity of group awareness information that each user is exposed to. We describe how this device can be implemented in an electronic brainstorming tool and show its influence on the distribution of ideas to the users. Results from a laboratory experiment using this tool indicate that group performance increased 9.6% when compared to the immediate broadcast of ideas and a post-hoc analysis suggests that information overload was attenuated: users were subject to 44.1% less deliveries of ideas, which gave them 53.3% more uninterrupted time; users switched 12.2% faster from submitting an idea to start typing the next idea; and the time to write an idea was reduced by 14.8%.