The CoExplorer Technology Probe: A Generative AI-Powered Adaptive Interface to Support Intentionality in Planning and Running Video Meetings

TL;DR

The CoExplorer prototype leverages generative AI to create an adaptive interface that supports planning and executing video meetings more efficiently by anticipating phases and providing relevant tools, while addressing user trust and agency concerns.

Contribution

This paper introduces CoExplorer, a novel AI-powered meeting interface that preemptively supports meeting phases and attendee input, advancing adaptive meeting technology.

Findings

GenAI can help meetings stay on track and reduce workload

Participants expressed concerns about trust and user agency

Design implications for future GenAI meeting tools

Abstract

Effective meetings are effortful, but traditional videoconferencing systems offer little support for reducing this effort across the meeting lifecycle. Generative AI (GenAI) has the potential to radically redefine meetings by augmenting intentional meeting behaviors. CoExplorer, our novel adaptive meeting prototype, preemptively generates likely phases that meetings would undergo, tools that allow capturing attendees' thoughts before the meeting, and for each phase, window layouts, and appropriate applications and files. Using CoExplorer as a technology probe in a guided walkthrough, we studied its potential in a sample of participants from a global technology company. Our findings suggest that GenAI has the potential to help meetings stay on track and reduce workload, although concerns were raised about users' agency, trust, and possible disruption to traditional meeting norms. We discuss these concerns and their design implications for the development of GenAI meeting technology.