Let Information Flow Into Awareness: A Design Space for Human-Like Experiences to Promote Informal Communication for Hybrid Work

This paper addresses the challenges of promoting awareness among coworkers and teams for hybrid work, thereby promoting informal communication. Derived from the merits of onsite experiences, we intend to design human-like experiences to let information naturally flow into awareness. Through annotated portfolios and documented design space schemas, we filtered a design space comprising three aspects: social cues as information carriers, processing information with ambiguity, and ambient information delivery. All aspects are equipped with actionable options. To assess the effectiveness of our design space, we conducted structured workshops with design researchers. Through thematic analysis of workshop data, we informed our design space with one more aspect: built-in lightweight interactions. This design-space thinking process helped us gain an in-depth understanding of human-like experiences and insights into using our design space for ideation.