Office Avatars: Working Remotely Rebooted

By: Andrea Hawkins-Daarud

The “remote” work force is growing both in terms of remote managers and remote employees. Managers are expected to oversee multiple offices, national or international, and the ease of phone calls, email, and computer-based tasks have reduced the need for office interaction with colleagues. It is easy to argue that this has resulted in a more efficient workforce, but it is also easy to argue that it has resulted in a less efficient workforce. Without dwelling on the arguments, how can one maximize the pros and minimize the cons for everyone involved? Videoconferencing? Teleconferencing? Reasonable answers, but not enough. I am here to advocate for robots.

I started consistently working remotely back in 2014. I now live in Houston, TX while my main office is in Phoenix, AZ. Grading myself, since then, I have maintained a high, productive level of integration with my work team through various technologies: Google Hangout, Skype, the phone, email, etc. Among various daily tasks, I have been able to coordinate large projects involving multiple people, develop concepts for funded government grants, and even coach some interpersonal dealings. Over this time period, I have also established myself as the senior scientist in my group. But despite this amazing self-report card, the situation wasn’t optimal for any one. 

The winds of change came when a series of events led to a situation last summer where I would be the only senior personnel “around” for a couple of weeks. This bizarre situation called for a bizarre solution and so, to enable a mobile version of myself around the office, my boss decided to purchase a Double-Robotics robot for our office. You read that right! I got a robot, my very own avatar, to go to work and be in the office. In brief, I will say, it worked! I was able to roam about the office a couple of times a day to check in with everyone and keep things focused and moving forward.

The concept of my robot is relatively simple, think an iPad on a small Segway. It is controlled over a browser using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Its slim figure and balancing capabilities ensure I can roam anywhere a door is open and Wi-Fi is available. (Lost contact on an elevator, I tried.)  Other people’s view of my face is effectively what they would see on facetime or another similar program, but the robot is fitted with a camera that provides me approximately 120 degrees of viewing, which means I can sit in a properly sized circle of people and see everyone. This view is far superior to what you would see using just the iPad camera (see picture). My view also includes video of my wheel so I can see the floor where I am going, this helps me dodge things like computer bags and see the parking dock. It also has an adjustable height so that I can comfortably speak with people who are sitting or standing. (For balance reasons, I  - and DoubleRobotics - highly recommend only moving when on the shortest setting.) When I am done using it, I simply drive it back to its docking station where it charges.

People’s reaction to this information is generally to laugh incredulously and ask if it’s like the robot on The Big Bang Theory. (Yes, it is.) I am the first to admit I thought it was going to be gimmicky when we purchased it. However, this thought was completely wiped away the very first day we got it. I had a meeting scheduled with a co-worker for which I would have normally used Google Hangouts, but because I had a robot, obviously I was going to use it. So, I log in and start rolling over to his desk. On the way, I pass by and overhear two co-workers casually discussing a project I was engaged in and was able to quickly tell them that I could come back for more discussion. Then while in the meeting, a third co-worker came up to me to ask if I could stop by their desk later. Game changed! Before the robot, my original meeting would have only resulted in me talking with one co-worker (I’m sure the meeting would have been very productive on its own). But with the robot, I engaged with four co-workers and touched on three projects just like I might have if I walked through the office.

With my now year of experience utilizing the robot, I can say that it has dramatically changed my day-to-day interactions. One of the most basic things I noticed was a difference in where I talked with people. Our office space is open concept and most would agree a social pressure exists to move to a secluded area when on the phone or a videoconference. Ironically, the pressure is not as strong to move if a co-worker walks up to your desk to chat. The robot took me off the phone or computer and put me in the latter category where it is socially acceptable to talk in the open. While this might seem like a trivial change, it opens to me, the remote employee, many of the benefits of working in an open environment. That is, I can join conversations that I was not intending to have, others can overhear my conversations and quickly join in if they have an idea, I can quickly scan a room to see if someone is there I need to speak with, and so on. This has been great for both work and personal benefit. Work wise, it is far more efficient to just quickly talk with the four (or however many) people in the area you need to, but on the personal side, there is a much stronger feeling of being a part of the team.

Another seemingly banal activity that took me by surprise was the difference the first time I joined a large discussion in a conference room “at the table.” One often hears that to move up in business one must sit “at the table.” Being remote, I previously have joined such discussions from a phone “on the table” or from a screen “next to the table.” Ostensibly, as long as you are engaged in the conversation, those would be similar. But the first meeting, where someone had to move to the side so that I could join the table really opened my eyes to how different it is. The robot provides a physical presence, a focal point, that every participant is cognizant of and responds to when scanning the room. 

Naturally, this is all very exciting for me! Having worked remotely for many years, I am used to primarily interacting with co-workers over the internet. However, I will say, the robot may have caused some unease amongst those in the office that first week (and there may still be a few who fear the robot uprising). There were some settings to figure out, make sure the video is on when people log on (it is kind of creepy for robots with no faces to roam about), also make sure the speaker volume is set correctly (apparently, I was yelling across the office the first few days), and then there was the learning curve of how to drive the robot. I have logged some hours playing MMORPG computer games, so familiarizing myself with how my view was related to where my robot physically was in space was not as difficult as it has proven to be for some of my non-gamer friends. 

As we collaborate with many other non-local groups, I continue to use Skype, Global Crossing, WebEx, Google Hangout, and whatever else is the best way to communicate with the current group of people. But I do use my robot almost daily, often multiple times a day for various lengths of time ranging from 10 minutes to hours. (Battery life is at least 4 hours.) It isn’t perfect, there are some challenges. The biggest issue for me is that the microphone is one way, so if I speak it mutes the other side. This may seem not that bad, I mean, obviously we shouldn’t interrupt each other! Communicating under these conditions, however, I have realized how much active listening involves sounds coming from both parties! I have learned to become more expressive with my face to continue my active listening, but there are still awkward moments. The other interesting challenge is that the camera on the robot is constantly trying to show the entire light spectrum, which means it can be fuzzy when there is a window in the view, but most annoyingly I can’t really see computer screens when they are bright. To get around this, I have actually engaged groups simultaneously with the robot and on Google Hangouts just to share screen. But despite these annoyances, the robot has still enabled remarkable interaction!

There have been many day-to-day experiences that I’ve marveled how they were only made possible because of my robot including simple things like being able to join a spontaneous group photo, “playing” with co-workers children when they come in, and hanging out with co-workers at the lunch table along with more traditional office like behaviors like rolling by co-workers discussing something relevant to me that I was able to just quickly chime in on, give a presentation from the front of the room while looking at my audience at eye level, and roll between multiple people to resolve an issue. But given some of the limitations I listed earlier, the robot is the not the best solution for all work scenarios. So, let’s talk some specifics, for which office scenarios is the robot good for and when is it not good and when is it ok?

Good

• Engaging people 1-1.
• Engaging groups of people sitting at a moderately sized table.
• Empowering remote employees to start conversations.
• Facilitating multiple quick 1-1 interactions with co-workers, e.g., you need to briefly talk to 3 people about 3 separate things.

Not Good 

• Watching presentations given on a screen My robot has a hard time with such variable brightness levels, it is extremely difficult to see the screen.
• Participating in a large group conversation where people are spread throughout a room. The audio is very directional and is only good up to about 10-15 feet away.
• Participating in a conference call. The one-way audio makes it impossible to tell if a person on the phone is talking when you are talking and there are no visual cues to indicate otherwise. If I am participating in a conversation where even one person will be on the phone, I just get on the phone, too.

Ok

• Discussing results on a screen with one or two people. In this scenario, you still won’t be able to see the screen well from the robot and so you would need to email the document to look at it or use Google Hangout or something simultaneously to share screen, but the view from the robot allows for better non-verbal communication. (When sharing screen, the view of the other participants is often blocked on other platforms.) Decreasing the brightness on the screen will help, but fine resolution will still be lost.
• Brainstorming things when you need to quickly sketch pictures and modify as a group. In these situations, I will sketch on a paper in front of me and hold it up to the camera and vice-versa. No other platform would be any better, but again, the view of the robot (wider angle) allows for a better interaction.
• Giving a presentation to a group. I’ve done this, but due to audio issues, we had to simultaneously use Skype to utilize the rooms speakers/microphones so that I could hear everyone. But, it was great to be able to watch the audience as I normally would when giving a presentation to get the non-verbal feedback of how the talk was going vs just sharing my screen and talking to my slides. 

So, are robots the future? Will we soon have offices full of just robots? I would not go that far. Local engagement with peers is still vital, and besides, not all offices are open-office-concepts, a necessity for my robot as it does not have any arms or fingers. I still make quarterly visits to my working group. But as much as videoconferencing was an improvement over teleconferencing, the robot has improved my remote working environment even more. The cost for our robot was approximately $3500, though they have an upgrade available now for $4000 (upgrade has apparently fixed the one-way audio issue and has self-driving as an option). This may or may not sound expensive, but when you consider the cost of travel to the local site, it isn’t hard to justify. I can meaningfully manage multiple projects each involving multiple people. I now have “human” interaction daily. Conversations don’t feel anonymized and aren’t just words in an email or chat. Discussions are face to face, and I can interact with multiple people at the same time, mostly on my terms. (My co-workers can still pick the robot up if they want or walk away from me… the robot has a more casual pace and doesn’t run.) So, while maybe robot exclusive offices aren’t the future, robot inclusive offices offer a unique (and fun!) opportunity for remote workers, employees or managers, to engage with local offices in a deeper more meaningful way.