The Impact of Communication Delay and Medium on Team Performance and Communication in Distributed Teams

Long duration space missions will involve communication delays of up to 20 minutes one way, a reality that will make it challenging for space crews and flight controllers to coordinate and pool their efforts, especially when unforeseen problems occur that may require extensive collaboration. The present study was conducted to examine how communication delay will impact distributed team performance, and whether communication media will moderate or exacerbate its effect. Method: Twenty-four teams of three were assigned the roles of space crewmember (2 participants) or flight controller (1 participant) and had to collaborate remotely on computer-based tasks simulating failures in the spacecraft’s life support system. Communication medium (text vs. voice) was a between-group variable; presence/absence of communication delay was a within-group variable. Performance variables included time to repair system failures and number of incorrect repairs. Audio-recordings of team members’ voice communications were transcribed and logs of their chats uploaded for further analysis. Results and discussion: Teams took significantly longer to repair system failures when team communication was asynchronous rather than synchronous. While communication medium had a significant effect when team interactions were synchronous, it had no differential impact under time-delayed conditions. Preliminary communication analyses suggest that under time-delayed conditions, successful teams in each media condition were those who adapted to the constraints of their communication medium to establish shared task understanding.