| dc.description.abstract | The coronavirus pandemic that first began sweeping the globe in 2020—and more commonly referred to as COVID-19—caused the world to shut down with little notice. Every organization had the capacity to do so rapidly switched over to a virtual environment, but this transition was unfortunately far from seamless. That is, individuals who had never interacted with technology for purposes other than recreation—such as reading the news, watching shows or playing video games—were forced to quickly learn how to adapt to using technology that support working virtual, in order to complete tasks that were required of them while at work or school. In this work, we discuss the findings of a study that was conducted for the purpose of collecting information about people’s experiences in different work environments (i.e., in-person, virtual, hybrid), in order to learn more about whether age, profession, distance to work, and several other factors make a difference in how people were affected by the transition to virtual environments due to the coronavirus pandemic. By analyzing the survey results of 104 individuals and the interview data of 12 of those individuals using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, we identified some of the key issues that people were facing. Despite discovering a variety of issues that were brought up in the survey results and interview data, we also discovered several common themes that were present that also often appeared to irritate users the most. Through a deep comparison of individuals’ experiences in in-person, online, and hybrid spaces, we describe how issues that were previously faced by people when attending work, school, events, or other activities in-person were reduced or eliminated by the shift to virtual. However, we also observed that some new issues surfaced and that existing issues were aggravated. In conclusion, we propose best practices for enabling individuals to be better informed and to more seamlessly transition to virtual environments. | |
