Understanding audio communication delay in distributed team interaction: Impact on trust, shared understanding, and workload

Distributed teams are geographically separated and may need to rely on networked communication technologies (e.g., audio or video conference, email) to mediate their interaction. A limitation of these networked communication technologies is that they generate transmission delays that result from network congestion or routing issues. For the purposes of this research we focus on verbal communication over audio and video technologies and define communication delay as the time interval between a team member speaking a message (sender) and when it is rendered on the other side (receiver). Communication delay in distributed settings is an important and challenging problem, particularly in air traffic control, and space and military operations, where communication and information sharing are paramount to team success. The goal of this research is to better understand the effect of communication delays on team collaboration and team processes to maximize distributed team performance.