Intentional Meetings
Evolving purposeful meeting systems, behaviors, and cultures with Generative AI
The Intentional Meetings project at Microsoft Research Cambridge UK aims to understand how to help organizations develop a goal-oriented meeting lifecycle that leverages Generative AI to construct dynamic goal-driven interfaces that adapt to organizational and team tasks and contexts.
Understanding meetings
Meeting goals – Our current focus
How we can leverage Generative AI to help people reflect on meeting goals? Without a solid understanding of why we are meeting, meetings will always be ineffective. Our work on meeting goals is unique in both HCI and Meeting Science, both because of our empirical focus on goals, and because we have now explored all phases of the meeting lifecycle — before, during, and between meetings.
The 2023 Microsoft Work Trends Index Annual Report (opens in new tab) showed that ineffective meetings were the number 1 obstacle to productivity, followed at number 2 by lacking clear goals, and at number 3 by too many meetings.
Goals: Experimental and Prototype studies
- Before meetings: Nudging Attention to Workplace Meeting Goals: A Large-Scale, Preregistered Field Experiment (CHI 2026) ;
What Does Success Look Like? Catalyzing Meeting Intentionality with AI-Assisted Prospective Reflection (CHIWORK 2025) - Before and during meetings: The CoExplorer Technology Probe: A Generative AI-Powered Adaptive Interface to Support Intentionality in Planning and Running Video Meetings (CSCW 2025)
- During meetings: Are We On Track? AI-Assisted Active and Passive Goal Reflection During Meetings (CHI 2025)
- Between meetings: Designing Interfaces that Support Temporal Work Across Meetings with Generative AI (DIS 2025)
Goals: Formative studies
Attention
- Multitasking in meetings: Large Scale Analysis of Multitasking Behavior During Remote Meetings (CHI 2021)
- Attention in meetings. Classification of Functional Attention in Video Meetings | Low Engagement As a Deliberate Practice of Remote Participants in Video Meetings (CHI 2020)
Meetings during COVID-19
- Meeting (the) Pandemic: Videoconferencing Fatigue and Evolving Tensions of Sociality in Enterprise Video Meetings During COVID-19 (HCI 2022)
- Collaboration and Meetings – Chapter 1 of the 2021 New Future of Work report | Bridging social distance during social distancing: Exploring social talk and remote collegiality in video conferencing (NFW 2021)
Meeting affordances
Hybrid and remote meeting paradigms
Prototype studies
- Hybridge: Bridging Spatiality for Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meetings
- Comparing the Agency of Hybrid Meeting Remote Users in 2D and 3D Interfaces of the Hybridge System
- An Equal Seat at the Table: Exploring Videoconferencing with Shared Spatial Context combined with 3D Video Representations
- Perspectives: Creating Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meeting Experiences
Formative studies
- (Re)Configuring Hybrid Meetings: Moving from User-Centered Design to Meeting-Centered Design
- Hybrid Meetings in the Modern Workplace: Stories of Success and Failure
Avatars
Prototype studies
- Avatars in mixed-reality meetings: A longitudinal field study of realistic versus cartoon facial likeness effects on communication, task satisfaction, presence, and emotional perception
- Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting Outcomes and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing
- Nice is Different than Good: Longitudinal Communicative Effects of Realistic and Cartoon Avatars in Real Mixed Reality Work Meetings
Formative studies
Specialized affordances
Prototype studies
- Semantic Devices: Beyond Audio: Towards a Design Space of Headphones as a Site for Interaction and Sensing
- Conversational Transitions: Making Space for Social Time: Supporting Conversational Transitions Before, During, and After Video Meetings
- Post-meeting dashboard: MeetingCoach: An Intelligent Dashboard for Supporting Effective and Inclusive Meetings
- Speech overlap in meetings: Automated mapping of competitive and collaborative overlapping talk in video meetings
Formative studies
- Meeting chat: Virtual Voices: Exploring Individual Differences in Written and Verbal Participation in Meetings | The Promise and Peril of Parallel Chat in Video Meetings for Work
- Spatial audio: Hear We Are: Spatial Audio Benefits Perceptions of Turn-Taking and Social Presence in Video Meetings
Robotic Telepresence
Prototype studies
- Belonging There: VROOM-ing into the Uncanny Valley of XR Telepresence
- TableBot: Getting a Handle on Hybrid Collaboration by Negotiating Control of a Tabletop Telepresence Robot
Case studies