"I need to be professional until my new team uses emoji, GIFs, or memes first": New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces

“I need to be professional until my new team uses emoji, GIFs, or

memes first”: New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using

Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces

Esha Shandilya

School of Information

Rochester Institute of Technology

Rochester, NY, USA

[email protected]

Mingming Fan

The Hong Kong University of Science

and Technology (Guangzhou)

Guangzhou, China

The Hong Kong University of Science

and Technology

Hong Kong SAR, China

[email protected]

Garreth W. Tigwell

School of Information

Rochester Institute of Technology

Rochester, NY, USA

garreth.w[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Virtual workspaces rapidly increased during the COVID-19 pan-

demic, and for many new collaborators, working remotely was their

rst introduction to their colleagues. Building rapport is essential

for a healthy work environment, and while this can be achieved

through non-textual responses within chat-based systems (e.g.,

emoji, GIF, stickers, memes), those non-textual responses are typi-

cally associated with personal relationships and informal settings.

We studied the experiences of new collaborators (questionnaire

N=49; interview N=14) in using non-textual responses to com-

municate with unacquainted teams and the eect of non-textual

responses on new collaborators’ interpersonal bonds. We found

new collaborators selectively and progressively use non-textual

responses to establish interpersonal bonds. Moreover, the use of

non-textual responses has exposed several limitations when used

on various platforms. We conclude with design recommendations

such as expanding the scope of interpretable non-textual responses

and reducing selection time.

CCS CONCEPTS

• Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social

computing.

KEYWORDS

Virtual workspaces; Computer-mediated Communication; Non-

textual Communication

ACM Reference Format:

Esha Shandilya, Mingming Fan, and Garreth W. Tigwell. 2022. “I need

to be professional until my new team uses emoji, GIFs, or memes rst”:

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication

in Virtual Workspaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing

Systems (CHI ’22), April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New

York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517514

1 INTRODUCTION

Any successful team collaborating in a workplace requires individ-

uals to have strong interpersonal bonds with each other [

Phutela et al. [

] and Bayes et al. [

] state that the use of nonverbal

modes of communication like facial expressions, hand-movements,

voice-tones, and smiles assist in conveying interpersonal warmth

that contributes to developing strong interpersonal bonds. Yet many

studies on workplace bonding have primarily focused on the phys-

ical workplaces [

]. On the other hand, Driskell et

al. [

] found weaker interpersonal bonds when looking at virtual

workspaces due to the absence of nonverbal cues.

Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have not only

transitioned to completely virtual workspaces, but also had to hire

and on-board employees virtually [

]. This tran-

sition may be dicult for people who have no prior experience

with online collaborations [

]. Moreover, working in a virtual

environment can result in platform fatigue and isolation in em-

ployees [

]. Prior studies have also highlighted the problem

of misinterpreting a message, or an emotion associated with the

message in a virtual setting that limits nonverbal modes of commu-

nication because people do not always have access to other people’s

nonverbal cues unlike when working in physical settings [59, 75].

These drawbacks aect virtual team communication by creating

confusion, which leads to more conicts, and adversely impacts

shared interpersonal relationships in a virtual workspace [

]. Mes-

sages can be supplemented with non-textual responses such as

emoji, GIF, stickers, and memes to overcome misinterpretations,

communicate eectively, and increase social connections in virtual

settings [

], but the non-textual responses are typically

viewed as less appropriate to use in formal settings [

]. We

suspect that new collaborators—students or professionals who join

a new team virtually, with no familiarity to the team—likely face

challenges and tensions with using non-textual communication to

connect with colleagues, and there may be design opportunities on

various platforms to support an ecient way for new collaborators

to use non-textual responses in virtual workspaces.

We rst surveyed 49 new collaborators to understand new col-

laborators’ experiences in using non-textual responses in virtual

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https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517514

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

workspaces. We dene new collaborator and virtual workspaces as:

Denition 1

(

New Collaborator).

Students or professionals who

joined a new virtual team to collaborate on a project during the

COVID-19 pandemic, without having any familiarity to the team

(e.g., interns, full-time recruits, students working on projects).

Denition 2

(

Virtual Workspaces).

Collaborative technologies

like Slack and Discord that connect and enable remote workers

of an organization to communicate, work, and achieve common

goals [87] in a virtual environment.

Our survey ndings indicated that new collaborators were using

non-textual responses, but often faced many challenges in using

those. They found their preferred method of communication was

not always supported by work platforms, the meaning behind non-

textual responses was not always clear, and unfamiliarity with the

team or organization’s work culture resulted in hesitation to use

non-textual responses.

We then ran interviews with 14 new collaborators to further

understand personal barriers, communication strategies, and tenets

of eective non-textual communication in the context of virtual

workspaces and new colleagues. Similar to previous work, we found

communication is essential for the team to thrive. More specically,

we uncovered the resourcefulness of new collaborators in using non-

textual responses eectively such as taking the lead from others

and mimicking their behaviors.

We make several design recommendations to improve how new

collaborators integrate within virtual workspaces. It is necessary

to expand the scope of non-textual responses, improve the inter-

pretability of non-textual responses, and support faster discovery

of non-textual responses.

Our contributions are as follows:

We present a qualitative

research study that identies pain-points, coping strategies, and

needs of new collaborators in using non-textual responses in virtual

workspaces.

ii)

Elicit knowledge about the use of various modes

of non-textual response by new collaborators to establish interper-

sonal bonds in virtual teams.

iii)

Make design recommendation to

enhance the experience of using non-textual responses for promot-

ing interpersonal bonds in virtual workspaces.

2 RELATED WORK

Workplace communication can take many form, such as through

audio calls [

], blogs [

], emails [

], social media [

text messages [

], and video calls [

] (including with parallel

chat [

]). Collectively, those earlier studies [

]

demonstrate the value dierent communication mechanisms have

on enhancing social connectedness among team members and

positively inuence team bonding at the workplace; however, the

research was conducted pre-pandemic, and where possible/feasible

(i.e. fully co-located teams) interaction among team members would

be in face-to-face settings, with blogs, social media, or text messages

functioning as an additional means of connecting with colleagues.

In contrast, virtually connecting and working has become an

increasing priority, and sometimes the only feasible option in a

pandemic era. Prior studies [

] examined

the impact of physical and virtual workplace communication av-

enues on teams’ bonding without focusing on new collaborators

(see Denition 1). Moreover, past works [

] did not

study new collaborators’ use of non-textual responses to connect

with the new team (without any prior familiarity with them) in a

virtual workspace (see Denition 2).

Therefore, the focus of our paper is to study new collabora-

tors’ perceptions of using non-textual responses in a virtual-only

workspace to form interpersonal bonds. We specically studied non-

textual responses in a virtual work setting because past work has

shown that non-textual responses in text-based chat systems substi-

tute face-to-face gestures [

] (that lack in a virtual setting) and pos-

itively inuence relationships among people in an informal virtual

setting [

]. Furthermore, text-based chat systems (e.g., Slack)

provide an alternative to avoid video-calling fatigue [

] and support

asynchronous collaboration [42] in a virtual-only workplace.

Our related work provides background context on physical

vs. virtual workspace, the importance of interpersonal bonds for

healthy work environments, and pre-pandemic views of non-textual

communication in the workplace.

2.1 Value of Interpersonal Bonds at

Workspaces

Within the context of work, positive interpersonal bonds between

colleagues foster a safe and conducive learning environment, which

contribute to a team’s eciency [

]. Whereas, negative interper-

sonal bonds shared by workers due to team conicts could induce

stress, thereby making individuals more reluctant to work [58].

Interpersonal bonds can be dened by perceptions of strong

personal and social relationships and feelings of belongingness, and

they are essential for helping individuals assimilate to a specic

group and their norms [73].

People can use nonverbal communication to assist in express-

ing emotions unambiguously [

], which is crucial for developing

strong interpersonal bonds in a workspace [

]. However, in

the current COVID-19 pandemic [

], there has been a shift from

physical to virtual workspaces [

], which signicantly

changed the work dynamic and removes traditional nonverbal com-

munication (e.g., facial expressions and tone of voice). Much of the

prior work has only focused on the value of interpersonal bonds in

a physical workspace [

], whereas new collaborators

are now being recruited to work in virtual workspaces [24].

2.2 Non-textual Forms of Communication

Promote Interpersonal Bonds Virtually

Virtual workspaces utilizing chat and audio-only systems remove

the typical means of communicating nonverbally [

], which results

in challenges when interpreting the emotion associated with the

text/audio and lack of information-rich feedback [

]. Driskell et

al. [

] state that teams formed on virtual workspaces share weaker

interpersonal bonds due to the challenges of computer-mediated

communications as compared to the teams that have interacted and

formed connections at physical workspaces.

To address these challenges, non-textual forms of communica-

tion like emoji, GIFs, emoticons, memes, audios, videos, and images

may be used to enhance communication and convey emotions

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA

clearly [

]. The increased use of non-textual forms of com-

munication can evoke intimacy and a feeling of social connect-

edness between the users [

]. Thus, establishing that

frequent use of non-textual communications can promote interper-

sonal bonds in virtual settings.

2.3 New Collaborators in a Virtual Workspace

An under-researched perspective—and one that has now become

highly relevant—is to understand new collaborator’s insight on the

role of non-textual communication in forming interpersonal bonds

within virtual workspace.

Prior work [

] did not adequately explain how

unacquainted individuals would use non-textual modes of

communication to form bonds in virtual work settings; although

Gesselman et al. [

] did explore the eect of emoticon usage

on the relationship between potential romantic partners, those

scenarios were personal. Furthermore, if we focus on emoji, which

are an extremely popular mode of non-textual communication and

the successor to emoticons, people often report that they try to

avoid using emoji in work environments and with people who do

not share close bonds. As people have varied interpretations of

emoji and they consider it a non-serious and unprofessional way

of communication [5, 41, 63, 78, 79].

However, those views toward unprofessionalism may no longer

be as relevant with the transition to virtual work environments and

the need for new collaborators to connect with colleagues. There

are also many dierent types of non-textual modes of communica-

tion (e.g., GIFs, stickers, videos, memes), which may help to serve

dierent purposes.

2.4 Research Questions

We aim to understand the experiences of new collaborators in using

non-textual communication to form interpersonal bonds within

virtual teams by answering the following research questions:

• RQ1:

How do new collaborators use non-textual modes of

communication to form interpersonal relationships in a vir

tual workspace?

• RQ2:

Do new collaborators face any challenges in using non-

textual modes of communication in a virtual workspace? If

yes, what are those challenges?

• RQ3:

What coping strategies do new collaborators employ to

overcome the challenges, if any, in using non-textual modes

of communication in a virtual workspace?

• RQ4:

What design recommendations can be incorporated

in existing virtual platforms based on new collaborators’

communication strategies to promote interpersonal bonds?

3 NEW COLLABORATORS SURVEY METHOD

We rst distributed an online survey to understand new collabo-

rators’ experiences in using non-textual modes of communication

in virtual workspaces. We studied the experiences of new collabo-

rators in using non-textual responses as they pleased but did not

specically focus on non-textual responses with or without text.

3.1 Materials and Procedure

We advertised our questionnaire on social platforms (e.g., LinkedIn,

Facebook, Reddit) and university Slack channels during a four-week

period to collect responses. The advertisements directly dened

our target participant group—new collaborators (see Denition 1).

Participants who indicated being new collaborators were the only

ones who were prompted with the survey questions. Participants

could complete the questionnaire in their own time. There was no

reimbursement oered for completing the questionnaire.

We had 23 questions in total (19 close-ended and 4 open-ended)

Our questions were centered around collecting: i) demographic

information (age, gender, prociency with computer-mediated com-

munication in virtual work, occupation, familiarity level with the new

virtual team), ii) virtual platforms used by their team to collaborate,

iii) familiarity with the virtual platform, iv) if they employ non-

textual communication in a professional setting (and why), v) their

most preferred non-textual response types, vi) if they were hesi-

tant in using non-textual modes of communication (and why), and

vii) any challenges experienced while using preferred non-textual

communication types on virtual platforms. To ensure the validity

and clarity of survey questions, we did a read-through session with

a few researchers (not part of our research team). Furthermore, we

did not receive any responses from participants that indicated con-

fusion about what we were asking. Our questionnaire participants

could also sign up for a follow-up interview (see sections 5 and 5.3).

3.2 Participants

We had 58 participants in total, but removed 9 because they did

not acknowledge being a new collaborator. Our remaining 49 new

collaborators (Female = 26, Male = 22, preferred not to say = 1)

were aged between 18-64 year old. Out of 49 new collaborators 42

rated their familiarity to the team between 1 to 3 on a scale of 1 to

5, where 1 = ‘I did not know anyone in the new team.’ and 5 = ‘I

knew everyone in the team.’

Our participants mostly represent younger age groups (18-34).

Specically, 18 new collaborators were 18-24 years old, 28 were

25-34, two were 35-44, and one was 55-64. We believe our group is

skewed toward a younger population because people in the 18-34

age bracket are more likely to start new jobs compared to older

people. The most frequent new collaborator category reported was

full-time employees (31 out of 49) followed by interns (7 out of 49).

We assigned the survey participants an ID letter S followed by a

number (e.g., S1, S2, S3).

3.3 Analysis

We report descriptive statistics for the close-ended responses and,

for the open-ended responses, we performed open coding [

The open coding steps were to rst familiarize ourselves with the

data by reading through all the open-ended responses. We then

assigned initial codes to the responses, then iteratively grouped

similar data points to generate high-level categories that could

provide a summarized understanding of the data.

4 NEW COLLABORATORS SURVEY FINDINGS

We present our survey ndings, using closed and open-response

data and participant quotes, under two themes: i) New Collaborators

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

Using Non-textual Responses and ii) Challenges New Collaborators

Face in Using Non-textual Responses.

4.1 New Collaborators Using Non-textual

Responses

We found that chat-based systems are the most used mode

of communication to collaborate with team members (40/49

respondents), as shown in Table 1. Further, the responses revealed

that our participants used a variety of platforms to ensure they

communicate eectively: Slack was most common (25/49), followed

by Microsoft Teams (17/49), and many other platforms.

All the respondents mentioned that they are comfortable using

computer-mediated communication (e.g., Slack, Google Hangouts,

audio calls, etc.) to communicate and collaborate on professional

projects. Further, we found that 38/49 respondents had high fa-

miliarity with the platform (rating themselves a 4 or 5, where 5

is ‘I was extremely familiar with the communication platform when

I joined’) and felt condent (responding agree/strongly agree) in

using a virtual platform to communicate and collaborate.

We found that 34/49 participants used non-textual responses in

virtual workspaces. However, 34/49 were also hesitant in using non-

textual modes of communication with their virtual team, which

validates our hypothesis that new collaborators face challenges

when using non-textual response in their virtual workspace. Ad-

ditionally, the most favored and most used mode of non-textual

communication reported was emoji (36/49), which might be be-

cause of the diversity of options and it is easy to use with text. GIFS

(21/49) and memes (16/49) while being more visually engaging were

preferred after emoji.

We found many reasons for using a non-textual response in a

virtual workplace. Participants (11/49) mentioned that they prefer

using it to add humor to their conversations, for example:

S2: “To make the conversation a little lighter and to indicate if some-

thing is funny or hilarious.”

Similar to prior work, participants (18/49) also recognized that

non-textual responses helped to convey a wide range of emotions,

moods, and intent with a message. Some of them also reported that

non-textual responses can soften the tone (6/49) and support quick

acknowledgments (8/49). For example:

S19: “I feel that they help convey emotion and provide context in

text conversations, where feelings are not as easily expressed as in

video calls. After a while on the team, it was also a means of having

a laugh or adding avor to casual conversations and getting to know

one another. For messages with a wider audience, they served as a

quick way to express agreement, looking into something or give a

quick response to indicate that attention has been given to a message

someone has put out.”

Two of our participants (S3 and S25) also felt using non-textual

responses helped them feel more comfortable and connected with

their colleagues while communicating virtually.

S25: “It helps to communicate emotion and create more meaningful

connections with your team. It gives the conversation a more human

and connected feel.”

In addition, S48, used non-textual responses to conform to the

team’s practice of using it, for example:

S48: “Other teammates and upper management uses them...”

Table 1: The frequent modes of communication used to col-

laborate with team members virtually.

Modes of Communication No. of Participants

Chat Systems 40

Video Calls 36

Audio Calls 24

Emails 2

Text Messages 1

Mails 1

Webex Meetings 1

4.2 Challenges New Collaborators Face in

Using Non-textual Responses

Our online questionnaire also asked several open-ended questions

to understand the hindrances and hesitations that new collaborators

face in using non-textual responses. We summarize those insights

that new collaborators shared in using non-textual responses in

virtual workspaces.

4.2.1

Unfamiliarity:

Many participants (16/49) cited that the fear

of not knowing the team when they join acts as a hurdle in using a

non-textual response in a virtual workspace. Consequently, people

feel restricted in using a non-textual response because they are

unsure about the team/organization’s culture, resulting in appre-

hension about how they would be perceived, for example:

S21: “You don’t really know these people, and so you want to give

o the right meaning of the message. Since we work remotely, what

makes sense to you may not for them... especially since I was new,

they did not know my personality.”

The quote mentioned above portrays the participant’s skeptical

attitude towards using a non-textual response in a new team

virtually because the participant is new to the team and worried

if the use of a non-textual response is misconstrued.

Furthermore, S53 also shared that they are unaware of the pur-

pose of using non-textual responses at the workplace makes them

hesitant to use non-textual responses, for example:

S53: “I’m very less familiar with these emojis infact till today also I

don’t know the actual need of some emojis.”

4.2.2

Personal Biases and Prior Experiences:

The partici-

pants responded that they hesitate to use a non-textual response

because of their personal barriers, such as their bad past experi-

ences when using a non-textual response with a team member. A

few participants (3/49) were even more uncertain about using a

non-textual response when they were supposed to communicate

with team members in senior roles. For example, S22 answered to

the question, why were you hesitant to use non-textual modes of

communication like emojis, gifs, stickers, and memes with your

team virtually?

S22: “Whenever communicating with the manager or any other

person at the higher levels.”

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA

One of the most recurring reasons to not use a non-textual

response is that many participants (6/49) perceive using it as

unprofessional at work, which resonates with the ndings of

previous work [

]. As a result, people desire to project

themselves as professionals and convey their seriousness about

work by not using a non-textual response, for example:

S10: “It’s not professional, so when joining a new team, it seems

inappropriate to use gifs/stickers when others do not. If I work with

this team longer, I’m sure I will start using them once I know everyone

well.”

In the above quote, fear of being unprofessional stems from

unfamiliarity with the new team. S10 further mentions the goal is to

comply with their team’s usage of non-textual responses. However,

it is interesting that S10 would use them after working for more

time and eventually knowing the team.

4.2.3

Technological Barriers:

A few participants (S2 and S45)

mentioned that a few platforms are not compatible to support non-

textual responses of their choice when asked about the challenges

faced by them in using non-textual responses, for example:

S2: “I use Microsoft teams which doesn’t support most of gifs.”

Moreover, a few participants (3/49) also stated that nding a

non-textual response that could express their true emotions on the

platforms is hard:

S18: “Sometimes, it is hard to nd the one emoji or GIF that expresses

what I try to communicate.”

Additionally, S45 shared that some platforms automatically sug-

gest a non-textual response when they are not looking for one

while communicating, for example:

S45: “[...] also if we type any text, it’s translated to the emoticon when

it is not required.”

4.3 Summary of Survey Findings

Our survey revealed that most of our survey participants prefer

chat systems and use non-textual responses with texts to express

emotions, acknowledge, and connect with others. However, 34/49

new collaborators struggled using non-textual responses, especially

when new to the team, which also answered RQ2 partially that new

collaborators face hindrances in using non-textual responses to

connect with the team.

From our survey, we still did not have a deep understanding

of: i) how new collaborators use non-textual responses to bond

with the new team, ii) other personal and platform barriers in

using non-textual responses, iii) coping strategies to overcome

those, and iv) what is the best way to support eective non-textual

communication that fosters interpersonal bonds. Therefore, to

answer those questions and understand the experiences of new

collaborators in detail, we conducted online interviews.

5 NEW COLLABORATORS ONLINE

INTERVIEW METHOD

We conducted interviews to further understand the use of non-

textual responses to form interpersonal relationships with the team,

reasons for new collaborators’ personal barriers, coping strategies,

and design opportunities for an eective non-textual communica-

tion for new collaborators. The research questions mentioned in 2.4

informed our interview study.

5.1 Materials and Procedure

We conducted semi-structured interviews on Zoom and recorded

sessions for data analysis with participant consent. Out of fteen

interviewees (1 pilot, 14 participants), two did not share their videos

during the interview.

Our semi-structured interviews were designed so that we could

ask: i) clarication questions to either the interview pre-screener

for new participants or the original questionnaire for returning

participants (see sections 3 and 4); ii) their motivations for using

non-textual modes of communication and context of use; iii) if

there are challenges related to using non-textual responses and

what coping strategies are employed by the participants; iv) if

non-textual communication has helped the participants to create

interpersonal bonds with their colleagues in virtual workplaces;

and v) what principles do the new collaborators consider to be

crucial for eective non-textual communication.

We ran one pilot interview to ensure that our interview guide

was clear, that questions made sense, and to check our planned

interview would not run over the scheduled time. We also made

sure that the main interviews focused more on topics not covered

in the online questionnaire or if we still did not have a clear picture

for some of our previous inquiries. The mean recording time for

our interviews was 47.6 minutes (min = 27, max = 72).

5.2 Participants

We interviewed 14 participants (Female = 8, Male = 6) aged between

18-44 years old. Table 2 presents the demographic details of all the

interview participants. Our interviewees were participants who

scored a low familiarity rating between 1 to 3 on a scale of 1 to 5

(where 1 = ‘I did not know anyone in the new team.’ and 5 = ‘I knew

everyone in the team.’) and who started working with a new group

of people virtually during COVID-19 (i.e., only knows colleagues

virtually). We selected candidates with low familiarity ratings to

further understand our survey results indicating the eects of low

familiarity on using non-textual responses. Seven interviewees

were not from our original questionnaire, but they completed a pre-

screener questionnaire before we selected them for an interview.

5.3 Analysis

We followed the Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis ap-

proach [

] to identify the themes and relationships among the

qualitative data. After the data-gathering phase, the rst author

listened back over the interviews and produced transcripts to

get familiar with the data. The next step was an iterative process

that involved coding the data for key insights from interviewees’

responses. Next, the rst author investigated underlying patterns

among the initially formed categories to classify the data into

high-level categories, while consulting with the research team.

Consequently, we looked at all the categories formed in the last

step to arrive at a nal set of themes and sub-themes. Braun and

Clarke’s highly-cited method does not call for multiple coders

or inter-rater reliability for good thematic analysis, which is also

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

Table 2: This table represents the demographic details like participant ID, age, gender, job role, team size, and joining period

of all the interviewees.

ID Gender Age Range Role Team Size Date of Joining

Pilot Male 25-34 Full-time Network Consultant 32 May 2020 - August 2020

P1 Male 35-44 Full-time Software Developer 25 to 30 May 2020 - August 2020

P2 Female 18-24 Ph.D. Student 5 September 2020 - December 2020

P3 Male 18-24 Full-time Data Science Associate cohort structure September 2020 - December 2020

P4 Male 25-34 Ph.D. Student 4 to 7 September 2020 - December 2020

P5 Male 25-34 Ph.D. Student 15 to 20 September 2020 - December 2020

P6 Female 25-34 Full-time Network Engineer variable team size March 2020

P7 Female 25-34 Software Developer Intern 6 to 7 May 2020 - August 2020

P8 Male 25-34 Full-time UX Designer 6 September 2020 - December 2020

P9 Female 25-34 Full-time Financial Analyst 12 to 15 May 2020 - August 2020

P10 Female 25-34 Full-time Software Developer 6 May 2020 - August 2020

P11 Male 25-34 Full-time Network Engineer 12 September 2020 - December 2020

P12 Female 18-24 Student/Research Assistant 3 to 4 September 2020 - December 2020

P13 Female 25-34 Part-time UX Designer 6 September 2020 - December 2020

P14 Female 18-24 Student/Research Assistant 6 September 2020 - December 2020

emphasized by other qualitative researchers [

]. The interview

participants are assigned an ID letter P, e.g., P1, P2, and so on.

6 NEW COLLABORATORS ONLINE

INTERVIEW FINDINGS

Through our thematic analysis, we answer our three research ques-

tions (RQ1, RQ2, and RQ3) under three themes: i) Using Non-textual

Modes of Communication to Form Interpersonal Bonds , ii) Chal-

lenges in Using Non-textual Modes of Communication to Form

Interpersonal bonds, and iii) Coping Strategies to Overcome the

Challenges in Using Non-textual Modes of Communication to Form

Interpersonal Bonds. We now discuss the narrative of each theme

in detail using quotes from participants.

6.1 Using Non-textual Modes of

Communication (RQ1)

This section explores unique methods adopted by participants to

use non-textual responses to form interpersonal bonds in a vir-

tual workspace. Similar to the insights gained from survey partici-

pants 4.1, all interview participants also used non-textual responses

to convey emotions accurately, mimic other people’s energy, and

conform to their team communication practices.

One of our participants, P1, mentioned that using non-textual re-

sponses with text in virtual workspaces was an outcome of the new

normal; people did not have access to any predened rules to com-

municate in virtual workspaces. Therefore, they had invented ways

to communicate eectively in the virtual workplace, for example:

P1: “The emoji and then the text communication is a subset of this

new expected cultural norm of the accepted behavior for a company,

that’s now online [...] You have an expectation that’s preset on, and

we’ve been trained; you watch a movie you’re learning like oh that’s

how people behave in an oce, you know, and now it’s not like there’s

a movie that shows people behaving on slack, so like the behavior,

dierent people really varies [...]”

Consequently, in the following sections, we explored unique

ways like, Gamifying Explicitly, Being Funny to Break the Ice, and

Enriching Textual Messages adopted by new collaborators to use

non-textual responses to form interpersonal bonds within their

virtual teams.

6.1.1

Gamifying Explicitly:

P2, shared how their team mem-

bers used personalized emoji to acknowledge the messages in the

communication channel, for example:

P2: “When I joined, someone told me we all had chosen a specic

emoji, and whenever we have a recommended message, oh, I’ve read it

instead of like All responding separately. We respond with our personal

emoji, so that’s a super formal way, my favorite emojis were already

taken when I joined the group, so I chose, in the end, a fun video emoji

with like a star...”

P1 and P9 also used emoji in their bio to imply a certain interest

that they wanted to pursue, to make quick decisions in a workplace

contest (P7), or for naming documents and products instead of using

their textual names (P13). P1 suggested using emoji for employee

ratings.

A few participants (P1, P7, P9, and P10) also mentioned they used

a GIF or sticker to represent themselves and their personalities at

the workplace. One of the participants, P1, mentioned that if an

employee used a certain emoji, then other individuals did not use

it because they felt it might be copying him.

P1: “There is an emoji that’s kind of like that this guy used to send to

everybody, and it became kind of like his thing...And then now do you

know we don’t see that emoji thrown around anymore, and feel like

people don’t want to use it, because then you know; it’s copycatting

that guy”

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA

In contrast to P1’s statement another participant, P7, said they

would want to use that specic emoji to connect with the person

quickly.

6.1.2

Being Funny to Break the Ice:

Many times participants

(P1, P7, P8, and P13) reported their teammates would post random

jokes or were funny to let them feel comfortable. To convey the

intent of being fun or humorous, team members used non-textual

responses like emoji and GIFs. For instance, the team lead posted

random jokes rst thing in the morning, and other team members

were supposed to react with an emoji from a set of emoji provided

by him.

P8: “My team lead posts some kind of random joke every day on like

one the platform, so what he did was like he posts a joke there, and

he would add random emoji at the bottom with the post, and would

want us to vote using those emoji.”

The above instance was one of the many examples where teams

tried adding humor through non-textual responses to their mes-

sages to let the new collaborators open up.

6.1.3

Enriching Textual Messages:

Participants (P1, P4, P5, P6,

P8, P9, P12, and P13) claimed that being able to use non-textual

responses in communication gave them a sense of sharing a com-

radery with their teammates. P4 also shared that it was only through

using non-textual responses in chats they were able to transition

from chats to video calls with a new team member, for example:

P4: “Then slowly, then, after some time we transcended from emails

to phone calls and then to video calls like four ... And that happened

because I would sometimes use SMILEY or some emoji and they would

also reciprocate [...]”

Moreover, participants (P1, P4, P5, P6, P8, P9, P12, and P13)

felt using non-textual responses promoted interpersonal bonds

that also helped their mental well-being by gaining a feeling of

companionship, for example:

P9: “Yes, I would say that because previously in my last company I

have made some great friends and, and I did not met with them like

face to face ever, but I, but I still talk to them and I haven’t had any

calls with them only messages and right now, at this company, I never

had, I never had any physical Like physical connection with like a

with like anyone [...] so I would say yes, non-textual responses have

helped me in in building the relationships and I have made some great

friends in my previous [and] current company.”

6.2 Challenges (RQ2)

Our survey study conrmed that new collaborators face challenges

in using non-textual responses 4.2 to form interpersonal bonds in

a virtual workspace. We also slightly discussed a few reasons for

those such as, Unfamiliarity, Personal Biases and Prior Experiences,

and Technological Barriers in section 4.2. This section extensively

examines those challenges on the basis of gathered interview data.

6.2.1 Unfamiliarity.

Similar to survey participants, even interview participants (P1,

P2, P4 - P14) also felt indecisive and hesitant to use non-textual

responses because they were new to the team. We found they were

hesitant in using non-textual responses because they did not share

a personal bond, for example:

P8: “I can say, when I was not very familiar with the team, I was

hesitant to use dierent smileys. Like you know, I’m kind of like shy

in nature when it comes to like sharing a heart SMILEY with others. It

is sometimes dicult for me, so yeah, I was rst like very hesitant to

put a heart. But later as I get to know people, yeah they are like kind

of cool... I don’t mind using it now.”

Moreover, almost all the participants were unsure how others

perceived their use of a non-textual response in the team; a lot of

this fear to use a non-textual response in a new team also related

to the non-textual response’s openness to interpretation based on

individuals’ personal biases and prior experiences (P4 and P13).

Consequently, such dierences in understanding a non-textual re-

sponse created misunderstandings and hurt the sentiments of team

members, as shared by P2 in the example below:

P2: “There is this thing within a certain group they have like a norm

that they don’t use the praying emoji for thank you because they do

not want to use any religious emoji...so they like own a thank you

emoji and...when I entered, I didn’t know this, so I used the praying

emoji for Thank you emoji, and then some people sent me a message

saying I should use the other non-religious thank you emoji.”

6.2.2 Personal Biases and Prior Experiences.

Personal

Idea of Professionalism:

The perceived understand-

ing of the professional way of conducting at the workplace was

scattered. It revolved around the fact that using a non-textual re-

sponse at a virtual workplace would make the participants (P3, P9,

P10, and P11) look unprofessional. P3, also evaluated that using

fewer words and more non-textual responses in a chat-based com-

munication system showed one’s incompetency to convey ideas,

for example:

P3: “[...] when you try to communicate a lot using a limited medium

like a job is essentially an instant messenger that comes from the idea

that you can’t really write letters and expect people to receive it and

all of that right [...]”

The reason for contradicting ideas about professionalism was of-

ten rooted in diverse cultural backgrounds, as shown in the example

below:

P9: “I would say, for using stickers and memes, they are fun, but

I don’t use those with like everyone basically I use these GIFs and

stickers approximately with only like four to ve people...I keep my

professional distance...if you would say because nobody uses those I

have back in India, so I am on the fence with that [...]”

Therefore, the concept of professionalism was diverse and

depended on cultural background and exposure to dierent work

cultures.

Dierences in Seniority – Age and Experience:

Younger par-

ticipants (P3, P9, P10, and P13) aged between 18 to 35 avoided using

non-textual responses with older adults at the workplace. They did

not want to take the liberty of jeopardizing their relationships with

older individuals as there was a possibility that the older adults

might not be aware of trending ways to communicate non-textually,

for example:

P9: “Most people, people in my team, are above 50 or 60, so it’s a

little dicult to send like meme, stickers it can mean like something

dierent if you are not sending to the people of your own age...Because

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

I did not like I uh I did not get any response back, so I thought, okay,

so maybe I should not have sent that; otherwise, she would have been

responded to me...it’s a generational gap.”

Moreover, a few participants (P1, P4, P5, P6, and, P12) were

more cautious in phrasing their messages and using a non-textual

response when communicating with a team member at senior roles

as they were apprehensive that it could aect their relationship

negatively, for example:

P6: “The very rst time, I couldn’t use all this because I was not aware

Like if it was actually a good thing to do so, even with the manager, I

still can’t do it... though things are smooth and all but I still can’t do

it or use emoji while chatting with my manager or some other person

in the senior management, it is just that we use simple SMILEY.”

The above examples demonstrated the role of age and seniority

level in determining if the non-textual response should be used.

Conformity Bias – Idea of Fiing in:

P10 and P12 tended to

conform to their team’s communication practices, for example:

P10: “I haven’t seen a lot of people using them already so you have to

conform with or whatever is going on in the company right, I cannot

be like Oh, you know I’m so friendly and everything and start using

it.”

From the above example, we see that even when the participants

(P10 and P12) wanted to use a non-textual response, they complied

with the usage pattern of their teams or organizations.

Personalized Meanings:

The reason for varied understanding

of a non-textual response was based on participants’ association, ex-

perience, and perception of a specic non-textual response. Conse-

quently, participants dened their own denitions of a non-textual

response based on age (P9, P12, and P14), personal associations due

to prior experiences (P2, P13, and P14), and cultural backgrounds

(P4 and P9), for example:

P14: “I actually mostly have that problem with the thumbs up analogy

because, like, in my family like if I use that with my mom she would

think I was really passive aggressive and like vice versa, my mom

used that with me and actually the rst time, my supervisor used it, I

thought she was mad at me, and then I realized that was her version.”

Many times non-textual responses without explicit words on

them were hard to understand for participants (P4 and P13) in cul-

turally diverse teams. It is dicult to comprehend the meaning

of non-textual responses because people from dierent cultures

express emotions using non-textual responses dierently. For exam-

ple, one of the participants, P4, shared that his co-worker preferred

to thank him through a crying sticker, which puzzled the partici-

pant; the following quote captures the instance:

P4: “So he would say thank you over the video, and after a few minutes

he would send a giphy...he would send that, and that sticker would be

crying. And it would seem that that person is sad, and I wouldn’t say

anything like for a few days, but then I noticed this kept happening

again. I was totally clueless...and then it turns out that he was sending

like over happiness, which I thought, like, ‘Why is he crying and why

is the person sad?’”

The above anecdotal stories of participants P14 and P4 suggested

that a person’s perception of a non-textual response also depended

on their personalized experiences and the impact it had on them,

apart from their cultural background knowledge and experiences.

6.2.3 Technological Barriers.

Time-consuming

Search and Select:

Another challenge faced

by the participants (P3, P5, P10, and P14) was the lack of optimal

features to nd the meaning of non-textual responses and using

them quickly, for example:

P5: “Yeah, I mean one thing is that there are too many emoji and I

have to if I had to use a new one, I had to go and search what it means,

and then use it. So most of the times, I’m aware that there is a hover

over feature, it tells the meaning, but it’s just that there are too many.

So, I think it’s just a preference that I tend to not look over it since,

as I mean since I’m a Ph.D. student, I tend to have a short amount of

time to get things done in a short amount of time.”

Moreover, for interactive collaborations, participants (P7, P12,

and P14) found the existing features either extremely limiting or

challenging for users to discover and use; for instance, P14 men-

tioned that even when people were aware that there was a raise

hand feature on video-calling platforms like Zoom, no one noticed

it when one used it:

P14: “I think when people use the raise hand feature, nobody ever

looks at it.”

Ineective Recommendation:

P13, shared that keyword

searches to locate an appropriate non-textual response matching

a user’s intent were often poorly met by the platforms. In other

words, platforms failed to suggest/recommend usable non-textual

responses in many instances. This was further aggravated by the

limited non-textual responses and the platform-specic keywords

to retrieve a specic non-textual response.

P13: “When I want to search some like keywords, but I cannot get

the emoji, I don’t know if they have, like several keywords for emoji

or there’s just like a naming for the emoji say if you give one emoji

several keywords I can search it very quickly... Sometimes when I type

something, especially for the emoji. I cannot get the result. I can just

see no results.”

6.3 Coping Strategies (RQ3)

In this thematic section, we present coping strategies adopted by

participants to overcome the challenges (Unfamiliarity, Personal

Biases and Prior Experiences, and Technological Barrier: Ineective

Search and Select) in using non-textual responses to form interper-

sonal bonds in a virtual workspace.

6.3.1 Unfamiliarity.

To cope with the problem of unfamiliarity within the team, par-

ticipants preferred to Observe and Adapt, Soften the Tension, and

Use Selectively and Progressively a non-textual response when new

in the team.

Observe and Adapt:

Participants (P1, P2, P4, P5, P6, P8, P12,

and P13) tried to ensure replying using appropriate non-textual

responses that would be acceptable and palatable to their collabo-

rator. They keenly observed the team’s communication practices

and adapted accordingly. This allowed them to slowly warm up to

using non-textual modes of communication within their team.

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA

Usage of non-textual response by people in senior roles further

alleviated their (P7, P8, and P13) apprehensions in using non-textual

responses, for example:

P13: “[...] for emoji, I think she’s the one who made our team very

emotionally attached. She started using emoji, and everyone was free

to use emoji because I hesitated about using emoji. After all, it expresses

our emotions our attitudes, and someone could misunderstand it. I

was very cautious about using emoji. So, when your senior, as in your

project managers, started to use or gave you some sense of comfort

that Okay, maybe others could use, then, then, you start using that.”

Soen the Tension:

P11, mentioned using non-textual re-

sponses like smileys in emails when reaching out to a dierent

team member helped soften the tension of unfamiliarity between

them. The quotation from the P11 is as follows:

P11: “I ensured to use two smileys at least when emailing my team

mates. It softens the tension that we have because we don’t know each

other.”

Use Selectively and Progressively:

We found that participants

(P1, P4, P7, and P9) used various types of non-textual responses

such as emoji and GIF dierently. When new in the team, partici-

pants started with emoji, and gradually progressed to using more

expressive non-textual responses such as GIFs when they devel-

oped closer relationships through spending time on projects and

learning common interests. For example:

P7: “I think, in general, even with my team I just I started out with

emojis and get pretty crazy and then I gured out if the person and

I had the kind of relationship that was casual enough for sharing

because there’s denitely GIFs that are like very funny funny like

those are the kind that you will interact with a friend using.”

P9: “I would say, for using, for using like a stickers and memes, they

are, they are fun, but I don’t use use those with like, with like everyone,

basically I use these GIFs and stickers approximately with only like

four to ve people...but the people who I am like comfortable with,

whom I chat like after oce, if I share my personal things with them

to, with those people, I’m pretty comfortable and I share the stickers

and memes with them.”

Moreover, participants (P2, P4, and P7) felt GIFs help a sender

share common knowledge about a popular trend or TV show

whereas emoji just lets a user express a xed emotion, for example:

P7: “There is a lot more information that a GIF carries compared

to an emoji...it is just a xed kind of expression or emotion devoid

of any context of why, like a person is feeling that way, except for

like what it is that you are talking about in the conversation.”

Therefore, when collaborators were new, they made selective

and careful choices to use a particular type of non-textual response,

mostly emoji, and as they spent time and learned about their teams,

they progressively used another form of non-textual response, GIFs.

6.3.2 Personal Biases and Prior Experiences.

To cope with the problem of varied interpretations of non-textual

responses participants formed due to personal biases and their prior

experiences, new collaborators Reach Out for Clarication and Use

Text-based Non-textual Responses.

Reach Out for Clarication:

A general approach followed by

participants (P2 and P13) was reaching out to the sender when they

sought clarication. Additionally, they reected on their actions

if they triggered the sender, as shown in the example below:

P13: “Young people in China use slightly smiling emoji when they

do not care or are speechless, and you do not wish to engage...once a

Prof. from China used and I had no idea what he means...I asked for

clarication, suggestions to improve if something was not right.”

Use Text-based Non-textual Responses:

Moreover, a few par-

ticipants (P4, P9, P13, and P14) opted for explicit text-based stickers

to avoid using culturally diverse non-textual responses that could

be interpreted dierently in a culturally diverse team.

6.3.3

Technological Barrier: Ineective Search and Select

Use a Closest Matching Substitute:

Many participants (P3, P5,

P10, P13, and P14) struggled to locate an appropriate non-textual

response due to ineective search and select process on communi-

cation platforms. Therefore, a few participants (P8 and P10) settled

with non-textual responses that were the closest match to their

intent. They used the rst non-textual response that appeared on

the search results to save time, for example:

P8: “When I do not get a particular emoji I nd a closest match to an

emoji available on Mattermost that I can use to substitute.”

6.4 Summary of Interview Findings

Our ndings revealed non-textual responses were used in creative

and resourceful ways by new collaborators to build interpersonal re-

lationships within their virtual teams. However, new collaborators

found using non-textual responses at virtual workspaces challeng-

ing due to personal hesitations and technological hindrances. We

further examined the coping strategies employed by new collabora-

tors to tackle various challenges faced by them. As a consequence,

in the next section, we discuss dierent design recommendations

for virtual workspaces that could promote interpersonal bonds.

7 DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS (RQ4)

7.1 Expand the Scope of Non-textual Responses

Our participants indicated that the use of animate d non-textual

responses makes senders and receivers happy. Animated GIFs have

been shown to be engaging and fun in the context of microblogging

platforms [

], though their study in a virtual workplace has

largely not been explored in prior work. Our research suggests

that animated non-textual responses should be included in the

current suite of non-textual responses as they promote feeling

good factor—including accessible non-textual responses in

communication channels. Non-textual response accessibility was

studied in various social media platforms, online blogging and

microblogging platforms [

]. We can build on that prior

work to enhance the accessibility of non-textual responses in the

collaborative communication channels used in virtual workspaces.

Further, the non-textual responses should be inclusive for team

members from varied cultural backgrounds. While non-textual

responses like stickers and GIFS provide a receiver with added

information about the context, situation, and relationship through

messages [

], though, at the same time. a non-textual response

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

can be misunderstood because culture can aect it’s interpretation,

therefore including text-based stickers and GIFs can avoid those

confusions. This nding is corroborated by prior work [

where authors studied the cultural gap in emoji interpretations in

personal communication and then discussed strategies to make

emoji culturally accessible.

7.2 Interpretable Non-textual Responses

Previous work has studied the interpretability issue with non-

textual responses in the context of social media and personal

communication [

]. Our research identied the need for

interpretable non-textual responses in virtual workspaces, and

suggests that virtual workspaces platforms should strive to design

non-textual responses that are not open to interpretations.

First, there should be a mechanism for the platform to suggest the

sender alternate forms of non-textual responses in case it understands

that the originally planned non-textual response is culturally sensitive

for the receiver. Kim et al. [

] attempt to bring context in emoji

recommenders that could be leveraged here as well. This would

allow people to eliminate unnecessary awkwardness.

Second, the communication platforms should suggest alternative

forms of non-textual responses that are age-neutral. Participants

were concerned that older adults may not be updated with latest

trends, therefore an alternative suggestion for trending non-textual

response would be useful in connecting with people across age

groups. Eorts have been made to understand emoji usage in older

adults [

]. The ndings from such studies could enable

building an age-inclusive non-textual response recommender.

Third, it should be made easier to ask/nd the meaning of a non-

textual response of the message—both for sender and receiver—and,

next, we make recommendations on how to achieve this.

Fourth, to overcome the challenge of interpretability due to un-

familiarity to the new team’s non-textual communication practice,

a user should have an option to view a trend/history of most used

non-textual responses in dierent situations such as appreciation,

gratitude, celebration, and so on in a virtual workspace.

7.3 Fast Discovery of Non-textual Response

Platforms should reduce the time to nd and select a non-textual

response. There should be an easy way to use non-textual response

recommendations—when to use or not to use—in a given context or

for a given search keyword. The current study suggests providing

keywords based on the user’s geographical location, language, cultural

sensitivity, mood, and context of the conversation. Similarly, the non-

textual response recommendations should also consider the cultural

acceptance according to a person’s location while recommending

non-textual responses; moreover, before a sender sends a culturally

sensitive non-textual response it should even ag them about their

inappropriate use of a non-textual response, which might hurt the

sentiments of the receiver.

Previous work by Cunha et al. [

] used a blend of emoji to

represent a concept like cold, world peace, and so on. Other stud-

ies [

] predict certain emoji by determining the sentiment

associated with a message by analyzing the content of the message;

another study [

] recommends emoji based on understanding the

entire dialogue; the user will be suggested an emoji depending on

the content of the last message. Such recommendations would allow

users to select an appropriate form of non-textual response without

investing a lot of time. However, the past works [

] do not

take into account cultural acceptance of a non-textual response in

a particular region while recommending it.

More recently, Feng et al. [

] assessed the request of new emoji

on Twitter data to gure out what people look for, when they look

for it, and what does not exist. This study is an initiation to expand

the keywords or provide more emoji. However, only one of the

studies [

] discussed the user’s awareness to retrieve a non-textual

response using keywords in their native language.

During our interviews, P12 mentioned the issue of not being

able to nd an appropriate emoji that she was looking for. This

could be due to the user’s language, dierent ways to perceive the

non-textual response, or cultural background knowledge, which

might not return the expected result for her search as shown in the

following quote:

P12: “Maybe I have dierent feelings about the emojis because the

emoji I see after the search is something I don’t know, like the meaning

behind it or the text to describe an emoji that I was looking for. We

have dierent feelings ab out this, so when I searched like type the

text to search for emoji, I probably won’t get the correct result or any

results.”

Therefore, to address this issue, enhancing alternate keywords

corresponding to a particular non-textual response based on lan-

guage or geographical location might help. For instance, if a native

Hindi speaker searches the ‘smile’ emoji in their local language,

the platform does not provide any non-textual response sugges-

tions. Currently, on platforms like Slack [

] and WhatsApp [

if a user searches a non-textual response using keyword in their

native language other than English, then the platform recommends

appropriate GIFs, but no results for emoji. Additionally, for Apple

products, there is a predictive emoji feature [

], which suggests

emoji only for a phrase or word in English to its users.

7.4 Standardize the Issue Reporting and

Automate the Linguistic Corrections

Our participants shared that a lot of time is lost in explaining issues

over textual modes in these cases. Moreover, at times the actual

issue is neglected while watching out for correct intonation and

grammar. Therefore, the platforms should enable template creation

for communicating issues and roadblocks eectively. These plat-

forms should also include automatic spelling, grammar, intonation

checks, and a relevant non-textual response. Currently, various inde-

pendent services provide virtual team template services for example

monday.com [

]. Besides that, Microsoft Teams also provides inte-

grated templates, SalesTim [

], on their platform to make remote

collaboration easier and smoother. However, these services do not

provide a template that could help users write their impediments

quickly without worrying about spelling, grammar, and intonation

checks. On the other hand, certain video conferencing tools like

Zoom provide whiteboards [

] where the presenter can draw to

explain their ideas. However, these features are fairly limited in

their capabilities. Participant P4 suggested that there should be — i)

some predened shapes and controls for use, ii) touch-based controls

New Collaborators’ Perspectives on Using Non-Textual Communication in Virtual Workspaces CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA

to allow for eective and ecient freehand drawing on the boards,

and iii) automatic creation of shareable documents from these boards.

8 DISCUSSION

Our research examined new collaborators’ perspectives on using

non-textual responses in virtual workspaces. Contradictory to some

prior work (e.g., [

]), our survey reveals a shift

in attitude where the majority of new collaborators (34/49) prefer

using non-textual responses in virtual workspaces as virtual settings

have become the default workspace. Our ndings suggest that new

collaborators use non-textual responses to connect better and to

be able to share a bond with a teammate, which is in line with the

past studies [

]. However, prior work has not studied the use

of non-textual responses in building interpersonal relationships

between the team and new collaborators [

], though

a few studies focused on the implications of computer-mediated

communication without including non-textual responses [

21, 25, 43, 46, 54, 64, 65].

New collaborators’ unfamiliarity to their teams made them appre-

hensive about using non-textual responses because they are unsure

how others would perceive them in the team. This uncertainty

in using non-textual responses stems from non-textual responses’

openness to various interpretations that team members have due

to personal biases, experiences and cultural knowledge, which is

also in line with Bai et al.’s nding [

]. Herring et al. [

] and

Tigwell et al. [

] briey discussed that people only preferred to

use non-textual responses with whom they shared a close relation-

ship. Moreover, we discovered technological barriers like limited

keywords to search and select a non-textual response hampers a

user’s willingness to use it, which has not been studied by past

work [

]. However, the challenges such as nding an ap-

propriate non-textual response to match sender’s intent [

and platform compatibility to support the visuals of a non-textual

response [

] are known issues. Moreover, the

recent works by Tigwell et al. [

] and Zhang et al. [

] actively

pursued this problem for people with vision impairments.

Our work further highlights that new collaborators put eorts to

cope with their personal hesitations and technological barriers. One

of the most prominent strategies to tackle personal hesitations was

observing and adapting non-textual communication practices in a

team, reaching out to people to seek clarication, and using a par-

ticular mode of non-textual response selectively and progressively

depending on the bond they share within their team.

As a new collaborator who has to juggle constantly to form inter-

personal relationships within a virtual workspace using non-textual

responses could aect the mental well-being of a user, echoing the

thought of Gilson et al. [

] that computer-mediated communi-

cation impacts the mental health of a virtual team. Our study is

a starting point in that direction, exploring the communication

strategies used by the new collaborators to address their hesitance

in using a non-textual response. Moreover, those strategies would

help to inspire and inform the designers’ design decisions in a way

that does not put collaborators in situations that might take a toll

on their mental health.

9 LIMITATION AND FUTURE WORK

We acknowledge that our participant sample was skewed towards

a younger age group from 18 to 44 years of age. Therefore, all the

ndings were grounded on the experiences of younger adults in

using non-textual responses on virtual workspaces. However, a

majority of new collaborators come from the age-group considered

in this study because those people are more prone to internships and

switching jobs [

]. Many of these young collaborators come in the

job market for the rst time. It would have been interesting to learn

about older age groups and their insights using non-textual virtual

platforms. Additionally, all the survey and interview participants

were located either in India or in the US, keeping the scope of the

study to two countries. However, we note that typical workforces in

the US can still be very diverse and comprise of people from dierent

nationalities [

]. Therefore, it exposed us to gather perspectives

from dierent work cultures even when participants came from

only two countries.

Our future work will focus more on understanding the perspec-

tives of older age groups, people from dierent countries, and per-

spective of teams (where the new collaborator joins) in contrast

to current study which is one-sided focusing only on the percep-

tions of new collaborators. The insights from these user groups will

allow us to understand better the eectiveness of our design rec-

ommendations for non-textual responses in building interpersonal

relationships. A longitudinal diary study [

] would be a useful

method to further examine the behavior of new collaborators with

respect to their time spent in the team [

] and transition from

virtual to a face-to-face work setting on the usage of non-textual re-

sponses. We could more closely understand the nuance surrounding

familiarity gained over time vs. the support of non-textual response,

although we are condent that non-textual responses are facilitat-

ing connections because new collaborators are adopting a common

language with their colleagues, which increases relatability through

rapport [

]. In contrast, we designed our study to understand the

perception of new collaborators in using a non-textual response

with a new team in a virtual-only workspace.

10 CONCLUSION

We present the experiences of new collaborators in using non-

textual responses in a virtual work environment to build interper-

sonal relationships with their team members. Even though people

still perceive using a non-textual response as unprofessional in the

workplace, we found new collaborators heavily use non-textual

responses in virtual work environment during the COVID-19 pan-

demic. Our work identied the hindrances of new collaborators in

using non-textual responses, coping strategies employed by them

to address the challenges, and how virtual platforms could provide

an elevated experience to new collaborators in using a non-textual

response eciently to form interpersonal relationships with their

colleagues quickly.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank all our participants for taking the time to share their

experiences.

CHI ’22, April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA Shandilya et al.

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