Sociometric badges: Using sensor technology to capture new forms of collaboration

This article introduces sociometric badges as a research tool that captures with great accuracy fine-scale speech patterns and body movements among a group of individuals at a scale that heretofore has been impossible in groups and teams studies. Such a tool offers great potential for studying the changing ecology of team structures and new modes of collaboration. Team boundaries are blurring as members disperse across multiple cultures, convene through various media, and operate in new configurations. As the how and why of collaboration evolves, an opportunity emerges to reassess the methods used to capture these interactions and to identify new tools that might help us create synergies across existing approaches to teams research. We offer sociometric badges as a complement to existing data collection methodsone that is well-positioned to capture real-time collaboration in new forms of teams. Used as one component in a multi-method approach, sociometric badges can capture what an observer or cross-sectional survey might miss, contributing to a more accurate understanding of group dynamics in new teams. We also revisit traditional teams research to suggest how we might use these badges to tackle long-standing challenges. We conclude with three case studies demonstrating potential applications of these sociometric badges. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.