Effects of Hierarchical Structure on Idea Generation Patrick Shih, Gillian Hayes, David Redmiles, Gary Olson Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Informatics Advisor: Gary Olson and David Redmiles Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine

Abstract

Response mediums used in group brainstorming sessions could have a profound impact on the resulting outcomes. Yet, little brainstorming research has assessed the effects of brainstorming mediums directly. This work provides a closer examination at brainstorming groups in terms of brainstorming medium. We present a semi-controlled evaluation of GroupMind, a collaborative mind-mapping tool that impose hierarchical structuring of the idea space. GroupMind performs better than using a traditional whiteboard in both interaction group and nominal group settings for the task involving memory recall. Our findings suggest that the hierarchical mind-map structure imposes important framing effects on group dynamics and idea organization during the brainstorming process. In general, participants indicated that they were more satisfied with GroupMind than whiteboard. We provide design ideas to assist in the development of future studies to uncover fruitful dimensions in future brainstorming research.

 

Bio

Patrick Shih is a PhD student in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine. Patrick obtained his Master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University and his Bachelor's from UCLA. Prior to joining UC Irvine, he worked in the User Sciences & Experience Research (USER) lab at IBM Almaden Research Center (ARC) in San Jose, CA. His research interests lie in the areas of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and Ubiquitous Computing (ubicomp).