The effect of group composition on divergent thinking in an interaction design activity

ABSTRACT

Nearly 50 years of empirical research has suggested that social influences have an inhibiting effect on creativity in collaborating groups such as design teams. This suggests that design teams may not be as creative as they could be, resulting in a negative impact on the design process. In this paper we investigate the effect of group composition on creativity in terms of divergent thinking, in order to determine how best to support the creative process in design and the development of design environments. We present some novel results about 'group think', showing that real groups foster refinement of ideas while nominal groups foster duplication of ideas.

References

1. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48), 1988
2. Amabile, T.M. The Social Psychology of Creativity. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1983
3. Benami, O., Yan, J., Creative Stimulation in Conceptual Design. Proc. ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computer and Information in Engineering Conference, (2002), 1--13
4. Beyer, H., Holtzblatt, K Contextual Design. Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, California, 1998
5. Boden, M. The Dimensions of Creativity. MIT Press Cambridge, London, 1994
6. Bonnardel, N. Creativity in design activities: The role of analogies in a constrained cognitive environment. Proc. Creativity and Cognition, (1999), 158--165
7. Bruseberg, A., McDonagh-Philp, D. New Product Development by Eliciting User Experience and Aspirations. Int. Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 55, (2001), 435--452
8. de Bono, E. The Use of Laterial Thinking. Jonathon Cape, London, 1967
9. Demhis, A.R., Valacich, J. S. Computer Brainstorms: More Heads Are Better Than One. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 4 (1993), 531--536
10. Diehl, M., Stroebe, W. Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: Toward the Solution of a Riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, (1987), 497--509
11. Fischer, G. Domain-Oriented Design Environments: Supporting Individual and Social Creativity. Computational Models of Creative Design IV (1999), 83--111
12. Gennari, J.H., Reddy, M., Participatory Design and an Eligibility Screen Tool. Proc. Proceedings of the AMIA Annual Fall Symposium, (2000), 290--294
13. Gough, H.G. A Creative Personality Scale for the Adjective Check List. J. Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 8 (1979), 1398--1405
14. Grudin, J. Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for Developers Communications of the ACM, (1994), 92--105
15. Guildford, J.P. Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, (1950), 444--454
16. Janis, I.L. Groupthink: psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes. Houghton Mifflin, 1982
17. Johnson, P., Johnson, H., Wilson, S,. Rapid Prototyping of User Interfaces Driven by Task Models. in Carroll, J. ed. Scenario-Based Design, John Wiley (1995)
18. Kiesler, S., Barley, S. R., Kraut, R. E., Dutton, W. H., Resnick, P., Yates, J., Does CSCW Need Organization Theory? Proc. CSCW, (2004), ACM Press, 122--124
19. Koestler, A. The act of creation. Dell, New York, 1964
20. Lamm, H., Trommsdorff, G. Group versus individual performance on tasks requiring ideational proficiency (brainstorming). European Journal of Social Psychology, 3, (1973), 361--387
21. Lawson, B. How Designers Think. Eastview Editions, USA, 1980
22. Mullen, B., Johnson, C., Salas, E. Productivity Loss in Brainstorming Groups: A Meta-Analytic Integration. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 12, 1 (1991), 3--23
23. O'Neill, E. User-developer cooperation in software development: building common ground and usable systems. Springer Verlag, London, 2000
24. O'Neill, E., Johnson, P., Johnson, H. Representation and user-developer interaction in cooperative analysis and design. Human Computer Interaction, 14, 1--2 (1999), 43--91
25. O'Neill, E., Woodgate, D., Kostakos, V., Easing the wait in the Emergency Room: building a theory of public information systems. Proc. DIS, (2004), ACM Press, 17--25
26. Osborn, A.F. Applied Imagination: Principles and procedures of creative thinking. Scribeners and Sons, New York, 1957
27. Paulus, P.B. Groups, Teams and Creativity: The Creative Potential of Idea-generating Groups. Applied Psychology, 49, (2000), 237--262
28. Paulus, P.B., Yang, H. Idea Generation in Groups: A Basis for Creativity in Organisations. Journal of Organisational Behaviour & Human Decision Processes, 82, 1 (2000), 76--87
29. Prante, T., Magerkurth, C. and Streitz, N., Developing CSCW Tools for Idea Finding - Empirical Results and Implications for Design. Proc. CSCW, (2002), 106--115
30. Rotter, G.S., Portugal, S. M. Group and Individual Effects in Problem Solving. Journal of Applied Psychology, 53, 4 (1969), 338--341
31. Streitz, N., Gei?ler, J., Holmer, T., Konomi, S., Müller-Tomfolde, C., Reischl, W., Rexroth, P., Seitz, P., & Steinmetz, R., I-LAND: An interactive Landscape for Creativity and Innovation. Proc. CHI, (1999), 120--127
32. Taylor, D.W., Berry, P. C., Block C. H. Does Group Participation When Using Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking? Administrative Science Quarterly, 3, 1 (1958), 23--47
33. Terry, D.J., Hoog, M. A. Attributes, behaviour and social context the roles of norms and group membership. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 2000
34. Torrance, E.P. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: norms-technical manual. Presonnel Press, Princeton, N.J., 1966
35. Warr, A., O'Neill, E., Getting Creative with Participatory Design. Proc. Participatory Design Conference, (2004), 57-60 Warr, A., O'Neill, E., The Effect of Operational Mechanisms on Creativity. Proc. Interact, (2005), ACM Press, 629--642
36. Warr, A., O'Neill, E., The Effect of Operational Mechanisms on Creativity. Proc. Interact, (2005), ACM Press, 629--642
37. Warr, A., O'Neill, E., Understanding Design as a Social Creative Process. Proc. Creativity and Cognition, (2005), ACM Press, 118--127
38. Warr, A., O'Neill, E., Public Social Private Design (PSPD). Extended Abstract of CHI, (2006), ACM Press
39. Warr, A., O'Neill, E., Tools for Creativity: Sketching with the EDC and PSPD. "Sketching" Nurturing Creativity: Commonalities in Art, Design, Engineering and Research , a workshop at CHI, (2006).

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

    • HCI theory, concepts and models

  • Interaction design

    • Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms