Personal Communication Across Time Zones

As part of a graduate course in Human-Computer Interaction, my team and I performed a formative study to investigate how users leverage communication technology to cope with the unique challenges posed by residential moves across time zones. We distributed an online questionnaire (N=26), the results of which we used to develop a semi-structured interview (N=10). We coded and analysed interview results using a grounded theory methodology.

Prior studies of cross-time-zone communication at CHI and CSCW focused mainly on collaboration with remote co-workers, not with family members. Studies that focused on family members did not capture recent changes in technology use, such as the rise of group chats. Many of our interviewees reported making use of group chats to stay in touch with family and friends, across a wide range of technologies.

Some highlights from the semi-structured interviews are presented in the table below.

Contributions: Concept, Experiments (one third of interviews), Analysis, Report Writing. This work was completed with two other graduate students, John Kanji and Harris Chan.