[January 25, 2018] I will be traveling to the University of Iowa to give a talk on our Tesserae work entitled “Project Tesserae: Understanding Job Performance through Low-Cost Sensing Fusion.”
Abstract: Over the past decade, technology advances have enabled tremendous improvements with respect to mobile device capabilities and connectivity. These new mobile devices and the overarching digital services have potentially ushered in a golden age of opportunity for transforming the modern workplace. However, despite these significant advances, there is one particular organizational routine that remains relatively indistinguishable from approaches ranging back multiple decades, the routine of the yearly performance review. Despite acknowledgment by nearly all parties involved in the process (owner, managers, employees) of the process being archaic and time consuming, there exists limited viable alternatives. The premise of Project Tesserae is to look and see if we can do better by cleverly fusing low-cost mobile devices that individuals already use everyday to better understand job performance. Project Tesserae is a year-long study of over 750 working professionals that is exploring the extent to which devices such as wearables, smartphones, Bluetooth beacons, social media, and other sensing streams can offer new insight into job performance at both the organizational and individual level. In this talk, I will present an overview of the Project Tesserae study design, offer insight on lessons learned, share experiences on various sensing technologies, and describe several early insights gained from Project Tesserae. I will conclude with various future research directions with respect to both Project Tesserae and several of our other related projects.