Vroom Helps Decision-Making Groups Jump to Conclusions Online

With the magic of the Internet, e-mail and instant messaging, you could hold meetings all the time. And that is what happens on the Net: endless conversations and endless discussions of options, but few conclusions or decisions. At least meetings end; e-mail seems to go on forever.

Most group software tools provide information for making decisions but don’t help with the process of coming to a conclusion. Discussion goes on and on, but it’s hard to get a sense of where the group is: You can’t simply look around a table and feel what’s happening.

So how can you encourage people to agree (more or less) before they vote? How can you help them see whether there is agreement?

This has long troubled a friend of mine, lawyer David Johnson, especially as he watched the endless online and in-person discussions around the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the Net-infrastructure body that seeks to make its policies on the basis of consensus.

Johnson is a well-known cyber-law lawyer who helped write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. He has been an interested observer of the ICANN process from the beginning.

He developed a software tool he wants to offer ICANN--but he also is trying to make it a commercial product for a broad range of customers.

Called Vroom (for virtual workroom), it adds context and visualization to online decision-making and offers a framework in which the group can move toward a decision.

Instead of a series of formless e-mails, you can see the status of the conversation. How close is the group to a decision? Is the answer clear or is the group divided? How many different proposals are there? Who is talking most, and whose voice has not been heard?

It uses a variety of displays, most colorfully a “racetrack” screen that shows the progress of the various proposals.

You can set it to notify you when someone comments on your remarks, when others vote for or against a specific proposal or when any other definable event occurs. You can highlight the contributions of the people whose judgment you trust (bellwethers) or filter out others.

The users also have to specify where they are in the process. Are you leaning for or against a plan? Are you just complaining or do you actually want to vote against it? Does your point constitute a new proposal or just a comment?

In fact, the tool creates a useful social discipline. The password-protected software forces people to declare their views. It makes it visible who’s arguing about the proposal on the table and who keeps bringing up the idea everyone has rejected. (It’s up to the group, of course, to figure out whether a person is championing an idea or is just a whiner, but at least the dynamics are clear.)

Likewise, the software can set a vote deadline or establish how many people must be ready to vote, making it clear when individuals are dawdling or rushing.

Of course, such a tool is not magic and can be misused, but at its best it can help group members organize themselves and keep moving as fast as they want to.

Nonetheless, I still have to wonder whether paying customers will appreciate its charms. The skeptical side of me says, “Yeah, we’ve seen these tools before. They’re great in principle, but they contravene human nature. People just don’t have the discipline to use them.” They don’t want to take the trouble to define the rules, and the systems require too much work.

That has been the case in the past, but there’s some hope that things are different now. For starters, until recently most people who considered themselves decision makers did not use computers regularly. At best, they had their secretaries print out their e-mail.

Second, the decision-making tools required not just a PC but also a specific software package loaded onto a user’s computer. It was hard to move from the decision-making environment into the “normal” world of e-mail, spreadsheets and supporting documents.

Johnson, who has managed his share of decision-making meetings and conflict-resolution sessions, noted that the premise of Vroom (https://virtualworkroom.com) is that people want a result. This is not a mere sharing of information. This gives everyone who wants to play according to the rules a chance to share in the outcome.

Whether or not Vroom is successful, it points the way for how software can make social interactions more effective. Rather than mimic reality--for example, real-time face-to-face meetings--it provides a visualization of a meeting, just as a graph does for a spreadsheet. People can see the behavior of the group, an aspect that otherwise can get lost in the noise of discussion.

The big question won’t be easy to answer: Does such software really produce better decisions, or will it simply help us reach them more easily? I have to believe that seeing is not just believing, but understanding.

*

Esther Dyson edits the technology newsletter Release 1.0 and is the author of the best-selling book “Release 2.0.” Comments should be directed to Esther Dyson at [email protected].