Brainstorming Groups

30. April 2009 by justdanika.

While reading Infotopia (Sunstein) I came across an area talking about brainstorming and discussing what types of groups can come up with good ideas. He mentioned a quote that directly contradicts what the design community believes.

“For such problems [brainstorming], deliberating groups have been found to do far less well than statisticl groups. The apparent reason is that deliberating groups discourage novelty.” He then goes on to say that you are better off to brainstorm individually and then to collaborate on decision making and judging ideas.

Deliberating groups are designed under the assumption that through deliberation they will improve judgements and predictions.

During a brainstorm there are set rules that need to be followed to encourage a good brainstorm. The first 3 are directly related to group dynamics.
1) Defer Judgement
2) Encourage wild ideas
3) Build on the ideas of others

Trust truly is the most important aspect of a group brainstorm. To feel that you are not being judged on your ideas and that you are contributing.

Sunstein goes into these during his social influences of “deliberative failures” due to the fact that people silence themselves. He says people fear their statements will be disliked or ridiculed (see Rule 1 and 2).
The problem with individual brainstorm (as Sunstein suggests as a solution) is that you can not utilize rules 3 without a group. Rule 3 states that your ideas can be enhanced and become more innovative as you hear others experiences and ideas and build off of them. A brainstorm is only as powerful as the collection of the experiences the people bring to the table. An unspoke idea or experience is useless and can not help others grow their ideas.

There are proven ways to make deliberation groups better group brainstormers and remove the lack of trust from the equation:

1) Do improv to let people relax and feel energized by the group. Work environments especially, usually encourage “normal behavior” and you need to break people out of it to get a good brainstorm.
2) Team building exercises to encourage acceptance.
3) Brainstorm on a topic not related that is suppose to be funny.
4) Talk about the opposites.Brainstorm a bug list to get people talking about the topic on a personal level.

These types of activities can break Sunstein’s suggestion that deliberation groups can not be good brainstormers. They can be but they need a some prepatory work before hand.

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