Constructing Shared Context for Temporary Teams in Virtual Worlds with Informal Interaction

Despite the growing importance of distributed work performed under time pressure, our knowledge about how temporary teams collaborating in virtual worlds construct shared context that enables their work is limited. Informal interaction is an essential but often overlooked feature in facilitating shared context, also in distributed teamwork. In our explorative, qualitative study, we examine engaging in informal interaction in a simulation of temporary and time constrained virtual world teamwork. Analyzing video recordings of student teams collaborating in Second Life, we find that teams engage in virtually embodied informal interaction for collecting information about each other, maintaining copresence, and transgression. Especially transgression helps teams construct shared context for their teamwork, but this can either facilitate or disrupt team performance, depending on the mutual interpretation of interactions by the team members. We suggest future research for facilitating teamwork in virtual worlds by evaluating and guiding the emerging shared contexts towards desired outcomes.