Ineffective meetings due to unclear goals are major obstacles to productivity, yet support for intentionality is surprisingly scant in our meeting and allied workflow technologies. To design for intentionality, we need to understand workers' attitudes and practices around goals. We interviewed 21 employees of a global technology company and identified contrasting mental models of meeting goals: meetings as a means to an end, and meetings as an end in themselves. We explore how these mental models impact how meeting goals arise, goal prioritization, obstacles to considering goals, and how lack of alignment around goals may create tension between organizers and attendees. We highlight the challenges in balancing preparation, constraining scope, and clear outcomes, with the need for intentional adaptability and discovery in meetings. Our findings have implications for designing systems which increase effectiveness in meetings by catalyzing intentionality and reducing tension in the organisation of meetings.

翻译：因目标不明确而导致的低效会议是生产力的主要障碍，然而在会议及相关工作流技术中，对意图性的支持却出奇地匮乏。为设计具有意图性的系统，我们需要理解工作者围绕目标的态度与实践。我们对一家全球科技公司的21名员工进行了访谈，识别出关于会议目标的两种对比心智模型：会议作为达成目的的手段，以及会议本身即目的。我们探讨了这些心智模型如何影响会议目标的产生、目标优先级排序、考虑目标所面临的障碍，以及目标不一致如何在组织者与参与者之间制造紧张关系。我们强调了在平衡准备、限制范围与明确成果，以及会议中所需的意图性适应与探索之间的挑战。我们的研究结果为设计能够通过催化意图性并减少会议组织中的紧张关系来提升会议效率的系统提供了启示。