Designing for collaborative creative problem solving

Collaborative creativity is traditionally supported by formal techniques, such as brainstorming. These techniques improve the idea-generation process by creating group synergies, but also suffer from a number of negative effects. Current electronic tools to support collaborative creativity overcome some of these problems, but introduce new ones, by either losing the benefits of face-to-face communication or the immediacy of simultaneous contribution. Using an interactive environment as a test bed, we are investigating how collaborative creativity can be supported electronically while maintaining face-to-face communication. What are the design-factors influencing such a system? We have designed a brainstorming application that uses an interactive table and a large wall display, and compared the results of using it to traditional paper-based brainstorming in a user study with 30 participants. From the considerations that went into the design and the observations during the study we derive a number of design guidelines for collaborative systems in interactive environments.