The Walking Talking Stick: Understanding Automated Note-Taking in Walking Meetings

TL;DR

This paper presents the Walking Talking Stick, a tangible device designed to improve note-taking during walking meetings by integrating voice recording, transcription, and a physical highlighting button, thereby enhancing focus and conversation flow.

Contribution

Introduces a novel tangible device that facilitates note-taking and turn-taking in walking meetings, demonstrating its effectiveness through user studies.

Findings

The device increased task focus during walking meetings.

The physical highlighting button improved turn-taking and note usefulness.

Participants found the device supported more dynamic and engaging outdoor meetings.

Abstract

While walking meetings offer a healthy alternative to sit-down meetings, they also pose practical challenges. Taking notes is difficult while walking, which limits the potential of walking meetings. To address this, we designed the Walking Talking Stick -- a tangible device with integrated voice recording, transcription, and a physical highlighting button to facilitate note-taking during walking meetings. We investigated our system in a three-condition between-subjects user study with thirty pairs of participants ($N$=60) who conducted 15-minute outdoor walking meetings. Participants either used clip-on microphones, the prototype without the button, or the prototype with the highlighting button. We found that the tangible device increased task focus, and the physical highlighting button facilitated turn-taking and resulted in more useful notes. Our work demonstrates how interactive artifacts can incentivize users to hold meetings in motion and enhance conversation dynamics. We contribute insights for future systems which support conducting work tasks in mobile environments.