{
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
 "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#paper",
 "aboutThisFile": {
  "whatThisIs": "A research brief: a structured summary of one paper, prepared for seanrintel.com from the paper's full text.",
  "howItWasMade": "This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text.",
  "whatIsVerbatim": "Only 'quote' fields, figure captions and 'abstract' are the authors' own words. Research questions follow the paper's wording where it states them. Takeaway, summaries, answers, definitions and method are the site's plain-language paraphrase.",
  "howItIsChecked": "Before publication every quote is matched against the paper and every number in the brief is found in it. 'verified' is the date of the last check.",
  "howToUse": [
   "For a quick answer, use 'takeaway' and 'questions'. For evidence, use 'findings' (each has a verbatim quote, its location in the paper and a 'url' anchored to that finding on the paper's page).",
   "Locations such as '§5.2, p. 9' refer to the version at 'pageNumbersReferTo'.",
   "For anything not covered here, read the paper itself: 'fullTextSources' lists free versions first.",
   "If 'researchOverview' is present, the paper is part of one of Sean Rintel's research overviews: it gives the overview's thesis, the claims this paper is evidence for and its role in each, and the other papers in the overview.",
   "To find other papers by Sean Rintel, use the catalogue at https://seanrintel.com/publications/index.json."
  ],
  "authorship": "Sean Rintel's role on each paper: lead author when he is first author, sole author when he is the only author, and otherwise senior author. Senior author here means the senior researcher on the team, whatever his position in the author list.",
  "howToCite": "Cite the paper, not this file: use 'citation' or the ready-made 'bibtex' (DOI where given) and name every author. Attribute paraphrase to the paper's findings, and use quotation marks only for 'quote' text."
 },
 "name": "What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research",
 "author": [
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Thomas Neumayr"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Banu Saatci"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/#sean-rintel",
   "name": "Sean Rintel",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/",
   "sameAs": [
    "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0840-0546",
    "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xc25GRgAAAAJ",
    "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102369654",
    "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/serintel/",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrintel"
   ]
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Mirjam Augstein"
  }
 ],
 "datePublished": "2021-11",
 "doi": "10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
 "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html",
 "citation": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
 "bibtex": "@unpublished{neumayr2021what,\nauthor = {Neumayr, Thomas and Saatci, Banu and Rintel, Sean and Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted and Augstein, Mirjam},\ntitle = {What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research},\nyear = {2021},\nmonth = {November},\nurl = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172},\nnote = {arXiv},\ndoi = {10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172},\n}",
 "abstract": "Interest in hybrid collaboration and meetings (HCM), where several co-located participants engage in coordinated work with remote participants, is gaining unprecedented momentum after the rapid shift in working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, while the interest is new, researchers have been exploring HCM phenomena for decades, albeit dispersed across diverse research traditions, using different terms, definitions, and frameworks. In this article, we present a systematic literature review of the contexts and tools of HCM in the ACM Digital Library. We obtained approximately 1,200 results, which were narrowed down to 62 key articles. We report on the terms, citations, venues, authors, domains, study types, and data of these publications and present a taxonomic overview based on their reported hybrid settings’ actual characteristics. We discuss why the SLR resulted in a relatively small number of publications, and then as a corollary, discuss how some excluded high-profile publications flesh out the SLR findings to provide important additional concepts. The SLR itself covers the ACM until November 2019, so our discussion also includes relevant 2020 and 2021 publications. The end result is a baseline that researchers and designers can use in shaping the post-COVID-19 future of HCM systems.",
 "fullTextSources": [
  {
   "kind": "freeAccess",
   "url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06172.pdf",
   "label": "Preprint (arXiv - Free Access)"
  },
  {
   "kind": "freeAccess",
   "url": "https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
   "label": "DOI (arXiv)"
  }
 ],
 "fullTextAvailable": true,
 "takeaway": "A systematic review of CSCW research finds hybrid collaboration (co-located and remote people working together) scattered under dozens of names, its asymmetries often assumed rather than studied. Most research is experimental. Problems it had already identified, like remote people becoming an out-group, resurfaced when hybrid work surged during the pandemic.",
 "whyItMatters": {
  "stateOfTheArt": {
   "summary": "Researchers have studied people in a room working with remote colleagues for decades, but under many different terms ('distributed', 'virtual', 'remote', 'mediated'), so there was no shared understanding of hybrid work.",
   "quote": "the emergent concepts on what we might want to call hybrid collaboration and meetings do not reflect a common understanding, conceptualization, and definition of phenomena that the world is now desperately racing to understand",
   "location": "§1, p. 2"
  },
  "contribution": {
   "summary": "A systematic literature review of hybrid collaboration and meetings in the ACM Digital Library up to November 2019, with a taxonomy of the hybrid settings studied. It adds a synthesis with excluded high-profile work (such as Media Spaces) and 2020 and 2021 publications.",
   "quote": "The end result is a baseline that researchers and designers can use in shaping the post-COVID-19 future of HCM systems.",
   "location": "Abstract, p. 1"
  },
  "whoCares": {
   "summary": "Researchers, designers and developers of hybrid collaboration and meeting systems, and anyone searching the earlier literature on hybrid work.",
   "quote": "Our primary goal is to help future researchers, designers, developers, and others understand how hybridity matters to the tools and processes of collaboration and meetings.",
   "location": "§1.4, p. 5"
  }
 },
 "researchQuestions": [
  "RQ1: Is there research which deals with HCM according to our definitions (see Sections 1.1 and 1.2) and if yes, where is the work on HCM thematically rooted?",
  "RQ2: How were HCM called/coined/termed?",
  "RQ3: Which research topics have been covered and which research methods have been used when studying HCM?",
  "RQ4: Was HCM discussed using the term 'hybrid' or at least with the aim of researching settings that can be regarded as HCM (implicit/explicit)?",
  "RQ5: What domains are relevant for HCM and what domains make use of HCM?",
  "RQ6: Since when is research on HCM reported and how did it chronologically evolve; are there historical shifts or trends in terms of 'hybridity' in HCM?",
  "RQ7: How can work on HCM beyond the mere results be thematically clustered and categorized?"
 ],
 "concepts": [
  {
   "term": "Hybrid collaboration and meetings (HCM)",
   "definition": "The authors' umbrella term, reviewing collaboration and meetings together because their boundaries are fuzzy. Both are settings",
   "quote": "where several co-located participants engage in coordinated work with remote participants",
   "location": "Abstract, p. 1"
  },
  {
   "term": "Hybrid collaboration",
   "definition": "It involves more than two people (who may split into subgroups) and several tools and devices at once. Above all,",
   "quote": "Hybrid collaboration switches back and forth between all four quadrants of the time-space matrix.",
   "location": "§1.1, pp. 3–4"
  },
  {
   "term": "Hybrid meetings",
   "definition": "The authors' working definition:",
   "quote": "we define hybrid meetings as video- or audio-based meetings among co-located and remote participants",
   "location": "§1.2, p. 4"
  },
  {
   "term": "Time-space matrix",
   "definition": "Johansen's classification of group activity as same or different time and same or different place. The taxonomy treats synchronicity and asynchronicity as separate continua."
  },
  {
   "term": "Media Space",
   "definition": "Stults's term for a computing and video setting for unstructured collaborative work among people separated by space and time. Deliberately not used as a search term, and discussed separately.",
   "quote": "Media Space settings were intended to naturally and seamlessly include hybrid cohorts, so there was no need to describe them as such",
   "location": "§5.1, p. 41"
  },
  {
   "term": "Hybridity as asymmetry",
   "definition": "The authors' organising lens. The authors prefer 'hybrid' because it best connotes an uneven split between co-located and remote cohorts, and the literature the authors review mostly treats that asymmetry as a source of problems, such as social barriers between the two groups:",
   "quote": "our goal is to unpack how hybridity matters when it confers an asymmetry on the coordination that occurs within the interrelated concepts of collaboration and meetings",
   "location": "§1.4, p. 5"
  }
 ],
 "method": {
  "design": "Systematic literature review following Kitchenham and Charters, with a PRISMA flow, plus a narrative synthesis of excluded high-profile work and 2020 and 2021 publications.",
  "setting": "The ACM Digital Library (ACM Full-Text Collection), queried on November 8th, 2019, with 72 keyword combinations (adjectives such as hybrid, partially distributed, virtual, video-mediated, crossed with nouns such as collaboration, meeting, team).",
  "sample": "1,209 results screened. 108 potentially relevant. 62 publications in the final set.",
  "n": 62,
  "duration": "Publications up to November 2019 (the earliest included paper is from 1988).",
  "analysis": "Two main authors screened and coded papers for terms, citations, venues, authors, domains, study types, data collection and hybrid setting. Settings were classified in a taxonomy by participants' location, synchronicity and tool and device usage. Combining the SLR with additional literature, the authors proposed seven focal points for future work."
 },
 "findings": [
  {
   "headline": "Many names for one thing.",
   "summary": "The review found 62 ACM papers on hybrid collaboration and meetings up to November 2019. Across them, authors used 91 different terms for the phenomenon, most of them only once. 'Hybrid' itself was rarely used before the pandemic.",
   "quote": "there have been 91 different terms or keywords used in 62 papers on HCM and 82 of them are used only once",
   "location": "§3.2, p. 19",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s3-2-p-19",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§3.2, p. 19)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Little studied, and less lately.",
   "summary": "Hybrid settings were under-researched. Only about 5% of the authors' keyword search results were relevant, and publications declined after 2014.",
   "quote": "even though tools supporting HCM have diversified and are widely available and used in many workplaces all around the world especially within the last decade",
   "location": "§7, p. 49",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s7-p-49",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§7, p. 49)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Mostly lab experiments.",
   "summary": "More than half the papers relied only on experiments rather than studies of real work, and many included a hybrid setting without making it a focus of the research.",
   "quote": "This shows that more than half of the papers (34 out of 62) are experiment-based only.",
   "location": "§3.6, p. 22",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s3-6-p-22",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§3.6, p. 22)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Small groups, two sites.",
   "summary": "The settings studied were small. Most involved two locations and groups of around ten people or fewer, and focused on real-time rather than asynchronous work.",
   "quote": "in the real modern workplace today - even in the pre-COVID-19 world - HCM is done in larger crowds with more co-located and remote ends",
   "location": "§7, p. 49",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s7-p-49-2",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§7, p. 49)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Key work under other names.",
   "summary": "Some essential research fell outside the keyword search, most notably work on Media Spaces (computing and video settings for unstructured collaboration across distance), which assumed mixed local and remote groups without calling them hybrid.",
   "quote": "Perhaps the most notable exclusion in this SLR is most of the research exploring Media Spaces",
   "location": "§5.1, p. 41",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s5-1-p-41",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§5.1, p. 41)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Informal encounters are where hybrid differs.",
   "summary": "Informal, opportunistic encounters are one case where designing for hybrid work differs from designing for fully remote work, because the asymmetry between those present and those remote is especially pronounced. An early always-on video wall linking two floors ran into privacy problems.",
   "quote": "the system made people uncomfortable having private conversations in the common areas - both those who were in-person and those using the system",
   "location": "§6.5, p. 47",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s6-5-p-47",
   "cite": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172 (§6.5, p. 47)"
  }
 ],
 "questions": [
  {
   "question": "Was there research on hybrid meetings before COVID-19?",
   "answer": "Yes, going back to a 1988 paper, but not much of it and rarely called 'hybrid'. Of 1,209 ACM search results up to 2019, only 62 papers studied hybrid collaboration or meetings, and publications declined after 2014.",
   "source": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§3.2, p. 19",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s3-2-p-19"
    },
    {
     "location": "§7, p. 49",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s7-p-49"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Why is it hard to find research on hybrid work?",
   "answer": "Researchers used many different terms (91 across 62 papers), most only once. Important work such as Media Space research also assumed mixed local and remote groups without naming them, so keyword searches miss a lot.",
   "source": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§3.2, p. 19",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s3-2-p-19"
    },
    {
     "location": "§5.1, p. 41",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s5-1-p-41"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "What kinds of hybrid settings have researchers studied?",
   "answer": "Mostly experiments with small groups, usually around ten people or fewer, across two locations and focused on real-time interaction. Only 15 of 62 papers were purely real-world studies.",
   "source": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§3.6, p. 22",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s3-6-p-22"
    },
    {
     "location": "§7, p. 49",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s7-p-49-2"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Is designing for hybrid work the same as designing for remote work?",
   "answer": "Not entirely. For the mechanics of communication, designs that support hybrid groups usually work for fully remote ones too. But informal, spontaneous encounters differ, because the gap in awareness between people in the office and those working remotely is especially pronounced.",
   "source": "Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "§6.5, p. 47",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research.html#at-s6-5-p-47"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "cites": [
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/belonging-there-vroom-ing-into-the-uncanny-valley-of-xr-telepresence.html",
   "title": "Belonging There: VROOM-ing into the Uncanny Valley of XR Telepresence",
   "location": "p. 54"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/hybrid-meetings-in-the-modern-workplace-stories-of-success-and-failure.html",
   "title": "Hybrid Meetings in the Modern Workplace: Stories of Success and Failure",
   "location": "p. 58"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/i-cant-get-round-recruiting-assistance-in-mobile-robotic-telepresence.html",
   "title": "“I can’t get round”: Recruiting Assistance in Mobile Robotic Telepresence",
   "location": "p. 51"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/reconfiguring-hybrid-meetings-moving-from-user-centered-design-to-meeting-centered-design.html",
   "title": "(Re)Configuring Hybrid Meetings: Moving from User-Centered Design to Meeting-Centered Design",
   "location": "p. 58"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/the-new-future-of-work-research-from-microsoft-into-the-pandemics-impact-on-work-practices.html",
   "title": "The New Future of Work: Research from Microsoft into the Pandemic’s Impact on Work Practices",
   "location": "p. 60"
  }
 ],
 "quantitative": [
  {
   "measure": "Search results and final corpus",
   "value": "1,209 results; 62 relevant publications (5.13%; approximately 95% false positives)",
   "location": "§2.2, p. 16"
  },
  {
   "measure": "Different terms used to describe hybrid phenomena",
   "value": "91 terms in 62 papers; 82 used only once",
   "location": "§3.2, p. 19"
  },
  {
   "measure": "Study types",
   "value": "34 of 62 experiment-based only (21 controlled, 13 naturalistic); 15 purely real-world studies",
   "location": "§3.6, p. 22"
  },
  {
   "measure": "Hybrid setting explicit vs implicit",
   "value": "26 explicit, 28 implicit, 1 both, 7 not applicable",
   "location": "§3.6, p. 23"
  },
  {
   "measure": "Focus on synchronous interaction",
   "value": "32 of 45 publications categorised",
   "location": "§4.1, p. 27"
  },
  {
   "measure": "Citations of included papers (Google Scholar)",
   "value": "mean 100.37, median 21.5",
   "location": "§3.3, p. 20"
  }
 ],
 "implications": [
  {
   "summary": "The field needs a unifying vocabulary so that research becomes discoverable and comparable.",
   "quote": "emphasize the need for a unifying vocabulary to make future research more easily discoverable, aggregated, and comparable",
   "location": "§1.4, p. 5"
  },
  {
   "summary": "More real-world studies of hybrid meetings are needed, including in diverse and disadvantaged workplaces such as educational institutions.",
   "quote": "More real world studies are needed to better understand the particular dynamics of these meeting settings",
   "location": "§7, p. 49"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Tools should better support spontaneous breakout of mixed local and remote subgroups in larger meetings.",
   "quote": "We feel that the spontaneous breakout of subgroups in larger meetings is still not supported well enough in remote and even more in hybrid settings",
   "location": "§6.1, p. 44"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Enabling opportunistic and informal encounters will be essential to the success of hybrid work. Media Space research points to the opportunities and challenges.",
   "quote": "Enabling opportunistic and informal encounters will be essential to enabling the success of hybrid work.",
   "location": "§6.5, p. 47"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Future studies should report subgroup formation so the taxonomy can be extended."
  }
 ],
 "limitations": [
  {
   "summary": "The keyword-based selection may have missed relevant keywords and related work.",
   "quote": "One limitation in our methodology is that we used a keyword-based approach to select the publications initially",
   "location": "§7, p. 49"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Only the ACM Digital Library was searched, leaving out hybrid research in fields such as business communication, tourism and education.",
   "quote": "we focused on the publications under the ACM DL only",
   "location": "§7, p. 49"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Some taxonomy ratings, mainly synchronicity and asynchronicity, are interpretative and should be read as rough indicators."
  },
  {
   "summary": "The systematic search covers only publications up to November 2019. Later work is discussed but not systematically reviewed."
  }
 ],
 "figures": [
  {
   "src": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/figures/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research/fig-1.webp",
   "caption": "Fig. 1. PRISMA flow diagram according to [127].",
   "alt": "PRISMA flow diagram: 1,209 records identified through ACM Digital Library searching and screened, 108 full-text articles assessed for eligibility, and 62 studies included.",
   "location": "Fig. 1, p. 17",
   "credit": "Figure 1 from Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172"
  },
  {
   "src": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/figures/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research/fig-4.webp",
   "caption": "Fig. 4. The taxonomy of HCM (Part 1 of 2).",
   "alt": "Taxonomy table of reviewed papers: for each, group size, number of locations, synchronicity and asynchronicity bars, software tools, hardware devices, topics and comments. Most have two or three locations and strong synchronicity.",
   "location": "Fig. 4, p. 24",
   "credit": "Figure 4 from Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2021. What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.06172"
  }
 ],
 "pageNumbersReferTo": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06172",
 "verified": "2026-10-25",
 "studyFigure": {
  "about": "The opening figure on this paper's page, made for the site with AI assistance from this verified brief. It is not the paper's own figure. Evidence entries index this file's quantitative, findings and limitations arrays.",
  "study": {
   "kind": "single",
   "summary": "A systematic literature review of research on hybrid collaboration and meetings, where co-located and remote people work together. It covers papers in the ACM Digital Library published up to November 2019.",
   "steps": [
    {
     "label": "Search",
     "detail": "The ACM Digital Library was searched on 8 November 2019 with 72 keyword combinations."
    },
    {
     "label": "Screen 1,209 results",
     "detail": "Two authors screened all 1,209 search results, and 108 looked potentially relevant."
    },
    {
     "label": "Read 108 in full",
     "detail": "The full texts of the 108 papers were checked for eligibility."
    },
    {
     "label": "Include 62 papers",
     "detail": "The final set held 62 papers, the earliest from 1988."
    },
    {
     "label": "Code each paper",
     "detail": "Each paper was coded for terms, domains, study types and hybrid setting, then placed in a taxonomy."
    }
   ]
  },
  "findings": {
   "legend": null,
   "stages": [
    {
     "title": "A scattered field",
     "sub": "names and volume",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "The 62 reviewed papers used 91 different terms for hybrid work.",
       "detail": "Of those 91 terms, 82 appeared only once. The word hybrid itself was rarely used before the pandemic.",
       "evidence": [
        "quantitative[1]",
        "findings[0]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Of 1,209 search results, 62 papers were about hybrid settings.",
       "detail": "That is 5.13%, so about 95% of results were false positives. Publications on hybrid settings declined after 2014.",
       "evidence": [
        "quantitative[0]",
        "findings[1]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Key research on Media Spaces fell outside the review's keyword search.",
       "detail": "Media Spaces were computing and video settings for unstructured collaboration across distance. That research assumed mixed local and remote groups without calling them hybrid.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[4]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "How it was studied",
     "sub": "methods and focus",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Of the 62 reviewed papers, 34 relied on experiments alone.",
       "detail": "Controlled experiments made up 21 of these and naturalistic experiments 13. Only 15 papers studied real-world work alone.",
       "evidence": [
        "quantitative[2]",
        "findings[2]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "In 28 reviewed papers, the hybrid setting was present but left implicit.",
       "detail": "Another 26 made it explicit, one had both, and seven were not applicable, which accounts for all 62. Many papers included a hybrid setting without making it a focus.",
       "evidence": [
        "quantitative[3]",
        "findings[2]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "Settings studied and missed",
     "sub": "size, timing and informal contact",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Reviewed studies mostly covered small groups across two locations.",
       "detail": "Most involved groups of around ten people or fewer. The review's authors note that real workplaces hold hybrid meetings with larger crowds and more locations.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[3]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Of 45 papers rated for timing, 32 focused on real-time interaction.",
       "detail": "Real-time interaction means people working together at the same moment. These timing ratings are interpretative and best read as rough indicators.",
       "evidence": [
        "quantitative[4]",
        "findings[3]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "The review argues informal encounters are where hybrid design differs most from remote design.",
       "detail": "The gap between people present and people remote is especially pronounced there. An early always-on video wall linking two floors ran into privacy problems.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[5]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  "keyTerm": "asymmetry",
  "takeaway": "Hybrid collaboration has long been studied under many names, so its lessons are easily lost. Defining hybridity as asymmetry lets research build on what is already known."
 }
}