Traverse the landscape of the mind by walking: an exploration of a new brainstorming practice
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Psychiatry and Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction
- Keywords
- idea generation, group brainstorming, mental energy, team dynamics, software design, software engineering, information systems, human factors, brainstorming while walking, Agile software development
- Copyright
- © 2013 Wang et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Cite this article
- 2013. Traverse the landscape of the mind by walking: an exploration of a new brainstorming practice. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e51v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.51v1
Abstract
Group brainstorming is a well-known idea generation technique, which plays a key role in software development processes. Despite this, the relevant literature has had little to offer in advancing our understanding of the effectiveness of group brainstorming sessions. In this paper we present a research-in-progress on brainstorming while walking, which is a practice built upon the relationship between thinking and walking. The objective is to better understand how to conduct group brainstorming effectively. We compared two brainstorming sessions, one performed during a mountain walk, the other traditionally in a room. Three preliminary findings are obtained: walking can lead to an effective idea generation session; brainstorming while walking can encourage team members to participate in and contribute to the session in an equal manner; and it can help a team to maintain sustainable mental energy. Our study opens up an avenue for future exploration of effective group brainstorming practices.
Author Comment
This article reports a pilot study conducted to better understand a brainstorming technique. The pilot study brings insights and a better understanding of the technique.
However, the study as it is carries insufficient data and different validity threats. As we plan to perform a complete research during the upcoming academic year, we kindly ask for feedback on this manuscript as well as suggestions for the design of the "real" experiment. Thank you.