The future hybrid meetings: Now you can "whisper" to your virtual colleague

Picture this: It’s Monday, and the workweek kicks off with a team meeting. Some colleagues are physically present, while others join from home — or perhaps even from a dentist’s waiting room. It’s a typical hybrid meeting.

From your virtual seat, you overhear soft exchanges among the participants in the physical room:

“Did you have a nice weekend?”

“What did she mean by that?”

“How did Friday’s meeting go?”

As an online participant, the challenge is that you cannot join in these side conversations. It can also be difficult to catch the subtle social interactions that occur during meetings – interactions that are essential for building better relationships with colleagues. But this does not have to be the case anymore.

With the program WhisperChannel, researchers have developed a tool that allows all participants in hybrid meetings to “whisper” to each other online. This technology holds the potential to significantly improve the quality of hybrid meetings.

A walkie-talkie for hybrid meetings

Ph.D. student Qianqian Mu from the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University is the driving force behind WhisperChannel, which she developed in collaboration with experts from the Alexandra Institute. This web app allows all participants in a hybrid meeting to send audio messages to selected individuals, much like a walkie-talkie designed for the hybrid workforce.

“Most online meeting systems only support communication with the entire group. There is a missing backchannel that is more intimate, enabling participants to feel closer, even when they are physically distant,” says Qianqian Mu. She adds, “We created WhisperChannel to help meeting participants build stronger relationships and to even out the imbalance between them. We’re already seeing that both online and in-person attendees feel more connected”.

WhisperChannel was developed through testing, interviews, surveys, and observations in companies such as Arla, BEC, Bankdata, EventSpace, LTIMindtree, and Unlikly. Additional features will be added to WhisperChannel in the future, which will further strengthen colleague connections.

“We are currently experimenting with the ability to send vibrations to each other. This feature has been very popular because it simulates a physical touch. Looking ahead, I believe there is potential to integrate this technology into wearables like watches and glasses,” says Qianqian Mu, who has published a scientific paper on the need for WhisperChannel.

A collaboration between companies and researchers

WhisperChannel is part of the broader REWORK project, financially supported by the Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC). Researchers have collaborated with the aforementioned Danish companies, which have provided valuable insights.

Several corporate partners are currently testing the technology, and researchers are witnessing significant interest from the business sector, which is eager to optimise the new hybrid work environment.

“We can never make hybrid meetings identical to in-person ones. Instead, we must embrace the differences and work with the inherent asymmetry of hybrid meetings,” says REWORK project leader Eve Hoggan, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University.

Since 2022, Eve Hoggan has brought together researchers, companies, cultural institutions, and artists to rethink hybrid work, which gained significant popularity after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companies are keen to improve the meeting experience or contribute specific technologies. The researchers from various research domains offer diverse perspectives on the overarching challenges. The cultural sector can help communicate these initiatives to a broader audience. With WhisperChannel, many hours of cross-disciplinary collaboration have resulted in a tangible tool with global potential.

“DIREC has enabled us to assemble a group that can address the challenges of hybrid work from multiple angles. This has allowed us to share insights across different fields and develop concrete tools that can shape the future of hybrid work,” concludes Eve Hoggan.

The REWORK project is set to conclude in 2025.

Learn more about REWORK here.