Enabling Spatial Behavior in Virtual Workplace

Since the beginning of 2020, working from home has become a trend for white collar workgroups. While telecommunication tools are efficient and they break the boundaries of time and space, I suggest that certain important spatial interaction is no longer viable in this way of communication. For example, proximity between people, body orientation and presence are no longer perceivable. Such signals people perceive from their environment are all crucial to workplace communication. As a result of losing such signals, there are no more casual chit chats that just spontaneously happen by approaching someone, presentations are a lot more stressful and awkward talking to a grid of boxes, some new hires are feeling disconnected from the team because it is hard to make connections… In response to the loss of spatial interaction in remote working, this thesis project is focused on researching telecommunication among workgroups, and designing to enable spatial behavior in virtual workplaces.

Read more in Shao's Medium post.