Designing new technologies to support synchronous interaction across distance has for many years focused on creating symmetry for participation between geographically distributed actors. Symmetry in synchronous interaction has, to some extent, been achieved technologically (while multiple social, historical, political, and hierarchical concerns continue to exist) and proven empirically in the increased use of remote-work technologies that were used during the pandemic. However, synchronous interaction in hybrid work is achieved differently, since the asymmetry produced by some participants being collocated while others geographically distributed introduces increased complexities for such interactions. Focusing on this challenge, we ask: To what extent can symmetry in cooperative work engagements be achieved in hybrid work contexts? We explore this question by interrogating multiple different empirical examples of synchronous hybrid interaction collected across different organizations, activities, and events. We found that the effort required to accomplish hybrid work includes additional articulation work necessary for bounding multiple intertwined artefacts across sites, devices, and applications. Further, the multiple artefacts setup across sites, combined with asymmetric collocation across participants, produce incongruence in technological frames of reference for each participant. All participants in hybrid work have only partial access to the hybrid setup, and no single person has access to the complete setup. The incongruence in technological frames produces insurmountable gaps in collaboration, causing all hybrid work situations to be characterized fundamentally by asymmetric relationships. We argue that symmetry in hybrid synchronous interaction is impossible to attain in attempts to solve this problem through design. Instead, we propose that designers of cooperative technologies for hybrid work shift towards developing artefact-ecologies supporting hybrid work, focusing on asymmetry as a necessary feature. Fundamentally, the design strategy should explore novel ways of taking advantage of the multiple different artefact-ecologies which serve as the foundation for the hybrid collaboration. Instead of striving for symmetry, we propose to feature asymmetric conditions in future technology designs for hybrid interaction.

多年来，设计支持跨距离同步交互的新技术一直致力于为地理分布的参与者之间的参与创造对称性。同步交互的对称性在某种程度上已经在技术上实现了（同时多重社会、历史、政治和等级问题仍然存在），并在大流行期间使用的远程工作技术的增加中得到了经验证明。然而，混合工作中的同步交互的实现方式不同，因为一些参与者在同一地点而其他参与者在地理上分布所产生的不对称性增加了此类交互的复杂性。针对这一挑战，我们提出这样的问题：在混合工作环境中，合作工作的对称性能够在多大程度上实现？我们通过询问在不同组织、活动和事件中收集的同步混合交互的多个不同经验示例来探讨这个问题。我们发现，完成混合工作所需的工作包括跨站点、设备和应用程序绑定多个相互交织的工件所需的额外衔接工作。此外，跨站点设置的多个人工制品，加上参与者之间的不对称搭配，导致每个参与者的技术参考框架不一致。混合工作中的所有参与者只能访问混合设置的部分权限，并且任何人都无法访问完整的设置。技术框架的不一致在协作中产生了难以克服的差距，导致所有混合工作情况从根本上都具有不对称关系的特征。我们认为，在尝试通过设计解决这个问题时，混合同步交互的对称性是不可能实现的。相反，我们建议混合工作合作技术的设计者转向开发支持混合工作的人工生态系统，重点关注不对称性作为必要特征。从根本上说，设计策略应该探索利用多种不同人工制品生态的新方法，作为混合协作的基础。我们建议在未来的混合交互技术设计中采用不对称条件，而不是追求对称。