Initiating conversations with new people at work is often intimidating because of uncertainty about their interests. People worry others may reject their attempts to initiate conversation or that others may not enjoy the conversation. We introduce a new system, Nooks, built on Slack, that reduces fear of social evaluation by enabling individuals to initiate any conversation as a nook -- a conversation room that identifies its topic, but not its creator. Automatically convening others interested in the nook, Nooks further reduces fears of social evaluation by guaranteeing individuals in advance that others they are about to interact with are interested in the conversation. In a multi-month deployment with participants in a summer research program, Nooks provided participants with non-threatening and inclusive interaction opportunities, and ambient awareness, leading to new interactions online and offline. Our results demonstrate how intentionally designed social spaces can reduce fears of social evaluation and catalyze new workplace connections.

翻译：与工作中的新同事开启对话常常令人望而却步，因为不确定对方的兴趣点。人们担心自己发起对话的尝试会被拒绝，或者对方可能不享受这场交谈。我们推出了一个基于Slack的新系统Nooks，通过允许用户以"角落"（nook）形式发起任何对话（即标识话题但不暴露创建者的对话空间），来降低对社交评价的恐惧。Nooks会自动召集对该角落感兴趣的其他用户，并预先确保即将互动的人确实对该话题感兴趣，从而进一步缓解社交评价焦虑。在针对暑期研究项目参与者的数月部署中，Nooks为用户提供了非威胁性、包容性的互动机会和环境感知体验，进而促成了线上与线下的新型社交互动。我们的研究结果表明：经过精心设计的社交空间能够有效减少社交评价恐惧，并催化职场新连接的建立。