Ufff… so much work. For my master thesis project, I built a software prototype and recruited close to one hundred participants to test it in a controlled experiment. Going into the project, I set myself the goal to publish the results. I achieved this goal when my advisor, Dominik Siemon, presented the findings at CRIWG 2015. The title of the paper is Evaluating Anchored Discussion to Foster Creativity in Online Collaboration.

Paper abstract:

Open innovation and crowdsourcing ideas rely on people to be creative through an online collaboration system. Creativity in online groups depends heavily on the interaction between group members. Anchored discussion was evaluated in a preliminary laboratory experiment as a new mode for creative interaction. In anchored discussion every comment is tied to some aspect of the idea. This first exploration generated novel insights for additional and refined research. Results indicate that anchored discussion leads to a more structured discussion amongst group members. For the same level of creativity, groups using anchored discussion needed less interaction and less discussion than the control groups. In a post session survey, participants made several suggestions on how to improve anchored discussion. We conclude that anchored discussion is promising as a new tool to aid online groups in creative collaboration.

Full reference:

Link, G. J.P., Siemon, D., de Vreede, G.-J., & Robra-Bissantz, S. (2015). Evaluating Anchored Discussion to Foster Creativity in Online Collaboration. In N. Baloian, Y. Zorian, P. Taslakian, & S. Shoukouryan (Eds.), Collaboration and Technology (pp. 28–44). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22747-4_3