(1) Pair Research: Matching People for Collaboration, Learning, and Productivity

[CSCW '14]
Pair Research: Matching People for Collaboration, Learning, and Productivity

Robert C. Miller Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Haoqi Zhang Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Eric Gilbert Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Elizabeth Gerber Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

To increase productivity, informal learning, and collabora- tions within and across research groups, we have been ex- perimenting with a new kind of interaction that we call pair research, in which members are paired up weekly to work together on each other’s projects. In this paper, we present a system for making pairings and present results from two deployments. Results show that members used pair research in a wide variety of ways including pair programming, user testing, brainstorming, and data collection and analysis. Pair research helped members get things done and share their ex- pertise with others.