As Tognazzini [1992] points out, brainstorming is vital to the task of casting off old ideas and embracing new ones. In the process of designing a co-authoring tool, we were in desparate need of ideas. Also, brainstorm sessions enable the team members to get to know each other. Moreover, such meetings let everyone focus on the new project and help to start off an interactive design process for what should become an interactive product.
Brainstorming is done in situations which are characterised by more or less ambiguity. Such problems typically require high touch interaction. Face-to-face meetings guarantee interactive and expressive communication among the cooperators (Kraut and Galegher [1992]). The creative nature of brainstorming is stressed by the communication process which is totally free from restrictive procedures. Only two rules are applied:
Apparently, both free people up to think in new directions (Tognazzini [1992]).
For The COOPerator project, multiple sessions were planned. First of all, two brainstorm sessions were held at which not only the members of the design and implementation team were present, but also some experts with regard to building information systems and groupware. The other meetings were intra-group sessions that were meant to evaluate and categorise the outcome of the brainstorm meetings. Their results are shown in the next paragraph.
The meetings were held in a large, bright room. The tables were arranged so that everyone could see each other. We used lots of large paper sheets depicting different categories of interest (e.g., communication environment and group task) so that it was always clear to everyone what had already been said. A large blackboard, that occupied almost an entire wall, was used to make temporary, in-between sketches. The atmosphere may be described as highly interactive, and yes, sometimes even frivolous or ridiculous (e.g., next to games, the system most desperately needed a direct connection to some pizza delivery service. And indeed, the Pizza Hut went on-line!). However, the meetings were clearly rewarding as the following results point out.
Just as it is vital that the first portion of brainstorming sessions be free, open, and creative, the last portion should be a time of weighing possibilities and probabilities (Tognazzini [1992]). At this point, the discussion focussed on two parts:
The former should give an idea of the supportive and counterarguments of working together and the latter should focus on what is needed to decrease group process losses while supporting group process gains. Clearly, our aim was not to create a normative system; we did not want to prescribe how co-authors should perform their tasks and interact with each other. Such an attitude would surely endanger the creativity in a co-writing process.
Summarised, the outcome of the brainstorm sessions as determined by the project team looks like this:
Other pages within this section are dedicated to the parts of The COOPerator that should support these functionalities.
Sjoerd Michels, Tilburg, The Netherlands