The impact of increased awareness while face-to-face

This article presents Second Messenger, a system of dynamic awareness displays that reveal speaker participation patterns in a face-to-face discussion. The system has been used by a variety of groups during face-to-face meetings, increasing individuals' awareness of their own and others' participation in discussions. Experimental results indicate that these displays influence the amount an individual participates in a discussion and the process of information sharing used during a decision-making task. These findings suggest that awareness applications bring about systematic changes in group communication styles, high-lighting the potential for such applications to be designed to improve group interactions. Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.