Social agents in the workplace: Enhancing collaboration in online teams

Abstract

Social agents are being deployed in many different contexts where people collaborate together, such as healthcare and manufacturing. Multiple researchers have recognized the importance of the environment in which agents operate and many studies have focused on the deployment of intelligent agents at home. The largest tech companies have also showed notable interest in conversational agents. However, more knowledge about what design features are desirable for an agent is needed, as these have an impact on collaboration.

This work investigated what features in an agent better support collaboration in online teams, through a remote study where participants were asked to complete two collaborative tasks. The main outcome of this study consists in recommendations on agent design, based on how features such as context-awareness, proactivity, and anthropomorphism affect team collaboration and the perception of the agent.

The findings suggest that an agent can stimulate collaboration within online teams and that the agent's social presence can significantly impact agent groupness. However, agent groupness appeared to be only desirable in some situations, depending on the kind of collaboration to be stimulated.