Mental Models of Meeting Goals: Supporting Intentionality in Meeting Technologies

Authors: Ava Elizabeth Scott, Lev Tankelevitch, Sean Rintel
Venue: CHI 2024
Free from the publisher

AThe study

Qualitative interview study with 21 employees of a global technology company, drawn from six work areas. Interviews were semi-structured, held over Microsoft Teams and lasted 30 to 70 minutes.

  1. 21 employeesA purposive sample of 21 employees from six work areas, chosen to vary in role, seniority, location and hybrid work.
  2. Video interviewsEach employee completed an onboarding survey, then a semi-structured interview of 30 to 70 minutes about meeting goals.
  3. A goals field to imagineInterviewees were asked to imagine a field for meeting goals in calendar invitations.
  4. CodingTwo authors open-coded six interviews to build a codebook, and the first author coded the other 15.

BWhat the study found

Two ways to see a meetingmental models of what meeting goals are

  • Interviewees described two mental models of meeting goals.One sees a meeting as a means to an end, reaching an outcome. The other sees it as an end in itself, for connection or discussion. One person can hold both.
  • Many interviewees treated a list of topics as a meeting's goal.A recurring meeting's standing agenda says what will be discussed but not why, which hides the meeting's purpose.

What gets in the way of goalsobstacles to setting, sharing and asking about meeting goals

  • Interviewees named many obstacles to setting and sharing meeting goals.The obstacles included too little time, many attendees with different roles, team norms, differing priorities and hidden agendas.
  • Meeting tools split a meeting's context across separate apps.Scheduling, chat and meeting apps each hold part of a meeting's context. The paper argues this can obscure why a meeting exists.
  • Invitees sometimes avoided asking organisers what a meeting was for.Invitees feared that asking would seem impolite, critical or ignorant. Invitees asked more readily when they already knew the organiser.

Clear goals help, with costseffects of clear, open or missing goals, and views on a goals field

  • Six of 21 interviewees said they were less likely to attend meetings without clear goals.Clear goals helped interviewees decide whether to attend and how to prepare. Missing goals brought uncertainty, even paranoia, and a sense of wasted time.
  • Interviewees said open meetings left room for discovery but could go off track.Interviewees also said that stated goals could feel like pressure.
  • Interviewees thought a goals field in calendar invitations could help organisers and attendees.Some interviewees worried the field would feel like pressure, be neglected or be hard to keep up to date.

CKey takeaway

People treat meetings as a means to an end, an end in themselves, or both, often leaving goals unstated. Tools can support meeting intentionality by surfacing goals from scheduling onward.

Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.

Abstract

Ineffective meetings due to unclear goals are major obstacles to productivity, yet support for intentionality is surprisingly scant in ourmeeting and allied workflow technologies. To design for intentionality, we need to understand workers’ attitudes and practices aroundgoals. We interviewed 21 employees of a global technology company and identified contrasting mental models of meeting goals:meetings as a means to an end, and meetings as an end in themselves. We explore how these mental models impact how meetinggoals arise, goal prioritization, obstacles to considering goals, and how lack of alignment around goals may create tension betweenorganizers and attendees. We highlight the challenges in balancing preparation, constraining scope, and clear outcomes, with theneed for intentional adaptability and discovery in meetings. Our findings have implications for designing systems which increaseeffectiveness in meetings by catalyzing intentionality and reducing tension in the organisation of meetings.KEYWORDS: videoconferencing, meeting, goal, agenda, intentionality, calendar, teams, workflows

Research brief

By Ava Elizabeth Scott, Lev Tankelevitch, and Sean Rintel.

Takeaway: People hold two mental models of meeting goals (meetings as means to an end, or as ends in themselves for connection and discovery). Misaligned goals can create tension between organizers and attendees, so meeting intentionality (knowing why you meet) needs tools that surface goals across the meeting lifecycle, from scheduling.

Why this matters

What was known
Meeting science has long flagged unclear goals as a cause of ineffective meetings, yet calendar and videoconferencing tools do not ask anyone why a meeting is needed. (§1, pp. 1–2)
What this paper adds
Rather than classifying meeting topics, as earlier taxonomies did, we examine people's intentions and assumptions before a meeting, how goals arise or are obstructed, and what follows. We draw design implications for calendar and meeting technologies, including generative AI. (§2.4, p. 3)
Who it matters to
Designers of calendar, planning and meeting systems, and the organizers and attendees of workplace meetings. Our findings have implications for designing systems which increase effectiveness in meetings by catalyzing intentionality and reducing tension in the organisation of meetings. (Abstract, p. 1)

Research questions

Method and data

Design
Exploratory, formative qualitative interview study, with an exploratory probe asking participants to consider a 'meeting goals' field in calendar invitations.
Setting
A global technology company. Interviews held as recorded Microsoft Teams video meetings.
Participants / data
A purposive sample of 21 employees across six work areas, selected for diversity of gender, age, location, work area, seniority, hybrid work status and managerial status.
Duration
Semi-structured interviews lasting between 30 and 70 minutes, preceded by an onboarding survey.
Analysis
Two authors open-coded six interviews. An initial hierarchical codebook was developed through iterative discussion, and the first author coded the remaining 15 interviews in MAXQDA Plus 2022.

Findings

Questions this paper answers

Why do so many work meetings lack a clear goal?
Partly because meeting intentionality (knowing why you are meeting) is hard to establish beforehand. Planning takes time people lack, and specific goals are hard for large mixed groups. Tools split a meeting's context across apps, and asking organizers why can feel impolite, so unclear goals sometimes go unchallenged. (See §4.2, p. 9; §4.2, p. 9.)
Does every meeting need an explicit goal?
Not necessarily. Some meetings exist to maintain relationships or give space for open discussion, and loose structure can allow adaptability and discovery. But goal-light meetings risk going off track, and treating discussion topics as the goal can hide why the meeting exists. (See §4.1.2, pp. 6–7; §4.1.2, p. 7; §4.3, p. 10.)
What happens when people are invited to a meeting without a clear purpose?
Uncertainty and a sense of wasted time. People described being less likely to attend or unable to prepare properly, uncertainty and even paranoia about why they were invited, and feeling their time was wasted. Clear goals before a meeting helped people decide whether to attend and how to prepare. (See §4.3, p. 10.)
Why do recurring meetings so often feel like a waste of time?
Their original purpose can fade. A series may run for a long time while any single instance is unlikely to change anything. Time is often blocked in advance before anyone knows what it is for. Getting through a standing agenda can replace asking why the meeting exists. (See §4.1.2, pp. 6–7; §4.1.2, p. 7.)

Contributions and implications

Limitations

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Concepts

Meetings as a means to an end
A mental model in which a meeting's goals are specific and knowable: participants view meetings as achieving outcomes that are expressly in aid of broader work (§4.1, p. 5)
Meetings as an end in themselves
A mental model in which the act of meeting is itself the purpose, which can also mean simply blocking time: participants view meetings as time for connection or discussion (§4.1, p. 5)
Meeting goals versus agendas
Goals and agendas are related but distinct: an agenda is a plan for reaching a goal. If goals set the destination for a meeting, then agendas outline the route. (§2.1, p. 2)
Intentionality across the meeting lifecycle
The purpose behind a meeting, which can be catalyzed or obstructed at different moments from setting it up to holding it. Intentionality can travel through the meeting lifecycle, from its conceptualization to its execution. (§4, pp. 4–5)

Figures

Diagram along an 'intentionality across time' arrow: two mental models (means to an end, and end in themselves), then how goals arise and six obstacles, then functional and affective/interpersonal implications.
Figure 2: Summary of findings: our findings centered around mental models of meeting goals; current practices and obstacles to considering meeting goals; and the functional, affective, and interpersonal implications of these mental models, practices, and obstacles on meeting intentionality. From the paper, Fig. 2, p. 6.
Screenshots of three vendors' meeting scheduling forms (top) and video call windows (bottom). None has a dedicated field for a meeting's goal.
Figure 1: Goals are not explicitly featured in Microsoft, Zoom, or Google calendar invitation interfaces (top row) or videoconferencing interfaces (bottom row). From the paper, Fig. 1, p. 1.

How to cite

Ava Elizabeth Scott, Lev Tankelevitch, and Sean Rintel. 2024. Mental Models of Meeting Goals: Supporting Intentionality in Meeting Technologies. CHI 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642670

This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{scott2024mental,
author = {Scott, Ava Elizabeth and Tankelevitch, Lev and Rintel, Sean},
title = {Mental Models of Meeting Goals: Supporting Intentionality in Meeting Technologies},
booktitle = {CHI 2024},
year = {2024},
month = {May},
publisher = {ACM},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642670},
doi = {10.1145/3613904.3642670},
}