TY - GEN
T1 - Who would you like to work with? Use of individual characteristics and social networks in team formation systems
AU - Gómez-Zará, Diego
AU - Paras, Matthew
AU - Twyman, Marlon
AU - Lane, Jacqueline N.
AU - DeChurch, Leslie A.
AU - Contractor, Noshir S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the Northwestern University Office of Provost, NSF IIS-1514427, NIH R01GM112938-01, and the Army Research Lab W911NF-09-2-0053.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2019/5/2
Y1 - 2019/5/2
N2 - People and organizations are increasingly using online platforms to assemble teams. In response, HCI researchers have theorized frameworks and created systems to support team assembly. However, little is known about how users search for and choose teammates on these platforms. We conducted a field study where 530 participants used a team formation system to assemble project teams. We describe how users’ traits and social networks influence their teammate searches, teammate choices, and team composition. Our results show that (a) what users initially search for differs from what they finally choose: initially they search for experts and sociable users, but they are ultimately more likely to choose their prior social connections; (b) users’ decisions lead to non-diverse and segregated teams, where most of the expertise and social capital are concentrated in a few teams. We discuss the implications of these results for designing team formation systems than promote users’ agency.
AB - People and organizations are increasingly using online platforms to assemble teams. In response, HCI researchers have theorized frameworks and created systems to support team assembly. However, little is known about how users search for and choose teammates on these platforms. We conducted a field study where 530 participants used a team formation system to assemble project teams. We describe how users’ traits and social networks influence their teammate searches, teammate choices, and team composition. Our results show that (a) what users initially search for differs from what they finally choose: initially they search for experts and sociable users, but they are ultimately more likely to choose their prior social connections; (b) users’ decisions lead to non-diverse and segregated teams, where most of the expertise and social capital are concentrated in a few teams. We discuss the implications of these results for designing team formation systems than promote users’ agency.
KW - Human capital
KW - People search
KW - Social capital
KW - Team formation systems
KW - Teams
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067593205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85067593205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3290605.3300889
DO - 10.1145/3290605.3300889
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85067593205
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2019 - Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019
Y2 - 4 May 2019 through 9 May 2019
ER -