Today I came across the work of Mike Krieger and Yan Yan Wang at Stanford's HCI Lab in which they studied the efficacy of certain online brainstorming techniques. Their research focused on comparison of idea generation tools to see if, through tool adaptations, it was possible to increase participation in expanding and improving ideas while overcoming the problems of too many disparate ideas, not enough idea collaboration that are typical of brainstorming on discussion forums. This very narrow (but valuable) study of brainstorming shows potential for significant improvement in modes of collaboration, so I hope they continue their probe into this area.
Krieger's research into idea generation revealed some great lessons from crowdsourcing endeavors on the Internet which he has shared in these slides posted on Slideshare.
The most valuable and, I think, uniquely insightful advice he gives are the 9 guidelines for when to apply crowdsourcing:
- When diversity matters
- Small chunks/ delegate-able actions
- Easy veriļ¬cation
- Fun activity, or hidden ambition
- Better than computers at performing a task
- Learn from hacks, mods, re-use from crowd
- Enable novel knowledge discovery
- Maintain vision & design consistency
- Not just about lower costs
