Interacting Cross-Space: Challenges and Insights on Conversational Power in Hybrid Meetings

While the prevalence of hybrid meetings brought tremendous economic and social benefits, it is important to identify and address the unique challenges of cross-space interactions between in-person and remote attendees. We conducted 30 observations and 25 in-depth interviews to investigate cross-space interactions. We found that in-person and remote attendees were able to transcend the segmented space and spontaneously interact, especially when the technology was set up properly; however, remote participants sometimes had to fight for the conversational floor. We found that interactions were sometimes affected by where the conversational power resided. The medium that has more attendees holds the power of speaking and influences behaviors of attendees joining from the other medium. We contribute to the literature by providing new insights that are specific to the context when hybrid meetings are more large scale.