Studying the Effect of Delay on Group Performance in Collaborative Editing

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2014

Find this in a Library

Catalog Record

Abstract

Real-time collaborative editing systems such as Google Drive are increasingly common. However, no prior work questioned the maximum acceptable delay for real-time collaboration or the efficacy of compensatory strategies. In this study we examine the performance consequences of simulated network delay on an artificial collaborative document editing task with a time constant and metrics for process and outcome suitable for experimental study. Results suggest that strategy influences task outcome at least as much as delay in the distribution of work in progress. However, a paradoxical interaction between delay and strategy emerged, in which the more generally effective, but highly coupled strategy was also more sensitive to delay.

Comments

Presented at the Cooperative Design, Visualization & Engineering 11th International Conference, Seattle, WA, September 14-17, 2014.

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-10831-5_29

Catalog Record

Share

COinS