Concept and Design

GROUPGARDEN consists of two interfaces: (1) afeedback interface that displays the feed-

back to the group, which is projected on a large surface and (2) acontrol interfacethat runs on a regular computer and that is operated by a person outside of the group. Both interfaces are implemented with Adobe Flash1using ActionScript 3.02. A client-server architecture is used to enable the two interfaces to communicate with each other (for a detailed description see e.g., Winter, 2011).

The feedback interfaceis designed to support the brainstorming rules and to diminish pos- sible problems. The probably most influential rule is to focus on quantity rather than on quality of ideas. To facilitate group members to find as many ideas as possible, the number of ideas of each group member is visualized. The metaphor of flowers is used to accomplish this. Figure 5.2 shows a sketch of thefeedback interface of GROUPGARDEN. A schematic

description of the main functionality is drawn in in purple. Flowers represent the individ- ual group members. In the depicted example the group consists of three participants. The number of petals as well as the height of the flower represent the amount of ideas. At the beginning, all flowers are equally high (level 1) and all petals are unfilled (visualized with dashed outlines). With each idea of a group member, one petal of the flower that represents

1 _{http://www.adobe.com/products/flashruntimes.html, last accessed on 26.04.2016}

2 _{http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/index.html, last accessed on} 26.04.2016

5 Supporting Brainstorming Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Group Feedback Individual Feedback Individual Warning Group Warning Stimuli

Group Member 1 Group Member 2 Group Member 3

Time

Figure 5.2: Concept of GROUPGARDEN. An annotated sketch of the concept.

the group member fills up. When all petals are filled, the flower grows (meaning that its height reaches level 2). New, unfilled petals appear.

Another mechanism that should motivate groups to produce more ideas is to provide feed- back about the group’s performance in addition to the individual feedback. At the same time, this aims at balancing participation, which has proven to be beneficial for brainstorm- ing (Oxley et al., 1996). In our prototype, the metaphor of a tree is used to visualize group performance. In the beginning, the tree has no leaves. Every time when all flowers reach a certain level, more leaves and fruit grow. This means that the minimum mutual level of the flowers determines the appearance of the tree. For example, when all flowers reach a minimum level of 2 (one or more flowers can already have reached higher levels), the tree will start to flourish.

To our knowledge, a comparable combination of individual and aggregated feedback has not been implemented in previous group mirrors. The additional feedback about the group aims at generating a positive group experience and strengthening the common goal. Furthermore, the use of gaming elements is intended to further increase participation. Gamification is the “use of design elements characteristic for games in none-game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011). In our case, gaming elements are the avatars in forms of flowers and trees that represent individual group members and the whole group. Comparable to a game, group members should strive to collect as many petals as possible and at the same time pay attention to the tree, which only flourishes when everyone contributes in a fairly balanced way.

Figure 5.3: GROUPGARDENVisualizations.Top row: GROUPGARDENin the beginning (left), an extremely unbalanced brainstorming session (middle), and a balanced brainstorming session with a lot of ideas (right). Lower row: Individual warning in form of a rotation of a flower (left), group warning in form of a lightning (middle), and thecontrol interface(right).

The third mechanism designed to increase the number of ideas is to show stimulating pictures in phases of silence. This idea is based on a project by Wang et al. (2010, 2011), who could show the positive influence of conversationally retrieved pictures on brainstorming. With this, the flow of ideas should be reflated when motivation decreases or the flow of ideas comes to a standstill. Furthermore, these pictures can be shown not only in phases of silence but also when a group gets stuck in a certain direction of ideas. Random pictures appear in the clouds in those cases. At the same time, this is thought to lead to more wild and unusual ideas, as the pictures are not necessarily related to the topic of the brainstorming.

Two other rules that our system aims to support are that criticism is not permitted and that group members should not interrupt each other. In both cases, individual group members need to be addressed. In these cases, the appearance of the flower changes by rotating the whole flower (see “Individual Warning” in Figure 5.2). Only one type of warning is used as we assume that group members know if they criticized an idea or if they interrupted another person. We deliberately chose a noticeable rather than a more “natural behavior”, as subtle changes on a peripheral display easily remain unnoticed.

Finally, the group should stay on topic. A group warning is used to make deviations from the topic apparent. This is, in reference to the work of Streng et al. (2009), done by showing a lightning (see “Group Warning” in Figure 5.2). Additionally, the metaphor of the sun that moves over the sky in a semicircle from left to right represents the passed time and the time that is still scheduled.

Figure 5.3 shows the final design of GROUPGARDEN. The image in the upper left displays

how the visualization looks in the beginning: All flowers are on level 1, the petals are un- filled, the tree does not have any leaves and the sun is on the left of the display. The image in the middle of the top row shows an extremely unbalanced brainstorming. The person

5 Supporting Brainstorming

represented by the flower on the left has an already large flower while the group member represented by the flower in the middle is still on the first level. Thus, the tree did not start to grow. The image on the upper right shows a balanced brainstorming session with a lot of ideas produced by all three group members. The lower row shows how individual warnings in form of rotating flowers look like (left) and how group warnings in form of a lightning look like (middle.)

Thecontrol interfaceis displayed in Figure 5.3 at the bottom on the right. A person outside of the group operates this interface that then updates the visualization that is displayed to the group. The possible functionalities in the menu on the right are to start and end the session, to set a time that is scheduled for the brainstorming session and to trigger group warnings. By clicking on a flower, a pop-up window opens on top of the flower. There, it is possible to individualize the flowers by choosing a color. Furthermore, the counter for the number of ideas (i.e., the number of filled petals) can be increased. Decreasing is also an option, primarily for undoing a mistakenly increased idea counter. In this window, individual warnings can be triggered.