An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques: Understanding the Roles of Idea Representation and Viewing Methods

Advances in innovation processes are critically important as economic and business landscapes evolve. There are many concept generation techniques that can assist a designer in the initial phases of design. Unfortunately, few studies have examined these techniques that can provide evidence to suggest which techniques should be preferred or how to implement them in an optimal way. This study systematically investigates the underlying factors of four common and well-documented techniques: brainsketching, gallery, 6-3-5, and C-sketch. These techniques are resolved into their key parameters, and a rigorous factorial experiment is performed to understand how the key parameters affect the outcomes of the techniques. The factors chosen for this study with undergraduate mechanical engineers include how concepts are displayed to participants (all are viewed at once or subsets are exchanged between participants, i.e., “rotational viewing”) and the mode used to communicate ideas (written words only, sketches only, or a combination of written words and sketches). Four metrics are used to evaluate the data: quantity, quality, novelty, and variety. The data suggest that rotational viewing of sets of concepts described using sketches combined with words produces more ideas than having all concepts displayed in a “gallery view” form, but a gallery view results in more high quality concepts. These results suggest that a hybrid of methods should be used to maximize the quality and number of ideas. The study also shows that individuals gain a significant number of ideas from their teammates. Ideas, when shared, can foster new idea tracks, more complete layouts, and a diverse synthesis. Finally, as teams develop more concepts, the quality of the concepts improves. This result is a consequence of the team-sharing environment and, in conjunction with the quantity of ideas, validates the effectiveness of group idea generation. This finding suggests a way to go beyond the observation that some forms of brainstorming can actually hurt productivity.