Objective: This article describes a series of studies conducted to examine factors affecting user perceptions, responses, and tolerance for network-based computer delays affecting distributed human-computer-network interaction (HCNI) tasks. Background: HCNI tasks, even with increasing computing and network bandwidth capabilities, are still affected by human perceptions of delay and appropriate waiting times for information flow latencies. Method: Conducted were 6 laboratory studies with university participants in China (Preliminary Experiments 1 through 3) and the United States (Experiments 4 through 6) to examine users’ perceptions of elapsed time, effect of perceived network task performance partners on delay tolerance, and expectations of appropriate delays based on task, situation, and network conditions. Results: Results across the six experiments indicate that users’ delay tolerance and estimated delay were affected by multiple task and expectation factors, including task complexity and importance, situation urgency and time availability, file size, and network bandwidth capacity. Results also suggest a range of user strategies for incorporating delay tolerance in task planning and performance. Conclusion: HCNI user experience is influenced by combinations of task requirements, constraints, and understandings of system performance; tolerance is a nonlinear function of time constraint ratios or decay. Application: Appropriate user interface tools providing delay feedback information can help modify user expectations and delay tolerance. These tools are especially valuable when delay conditions exceed a few seconds or when task constraints and system demands are high. Interface designs for HCNI tasks should consider assistant-style presentations of delay feedback, information freshness, and network characteristics. Assistants should also gather awareness of user time constraints.

Despite their rising popularity, distributed teams face a number of collaboration challenges that may potentially hinder their ability to productively coordinate their resources, activities, and information, often in dynamic and uncertain task environments. In this paper, we focus principally on the criticality of information alignment for supporting coordinated task performance in complex operational environments. As organizations become more expertise, geographically, and temporally distributed, appropriate alignment and coordination among distributed team members becomes more critical for minimizing the occurrence of information flow failures, poor decision-making, and degraded team performance. We first describe these coordination processes using the metaphor of an ‘information clutch’ that allows for smooth transitions of task priorities and activities in expert teams. We then present two case study examples that illustrate the potentially significant impact of information sharing and information alignment on productivity and coordination in organizations. We conclude with a discussion of future directions in this area.

In early 2014, a number of large-scale adverse weather events in the United States (and elsewhere) have renewed discussions of event response and resilience. Unlike events caused by human error or malicious intent, adverse natural events can be seen as uncontrolled and unpreventable; the measure of response success is the mitigation of adverse and disastrous effects. However, significant cognitive limitations interfere with human decision makers’ ability to effectively estimate likelihood, magnitude, and effective response of large-scale events in the face of multiple forms of uncertainty and system dependencies. Some authors highlight stability and maintenance of original design capability as the fundamental goal of robust and resilient response. Long-standing traditions from systems dynamics, population ecology, and process control suggest that improved understanding of system response ranges and dynamic equilibria provide a better description of effective event response. Challenges due to cognitive framing and deep uncertainty influence critical interplays of event characteristics, decision maker expertise, and resource availability. The concept of resilience boundary framing is introduced as a desirable, but difficult to achieve, goal for decision makers to respond gracefully to large-scale natural events. Examples from January and February 2014 are used to highlight these issues.