The Effect of Group Composition on Divergent Thinking in an Interaction Design Activity

Nearly 50 years of empirical research has suggested that social influences have an inhibiting effect on creativity in collaborating groups such as design teams. This suggests that design teams may not be as creative as they could be, resulting in a negative impact on the design process. In this paper we investigate the effect of group composition on creativity in terms of divergent thinking, in order to determine how best to support the creative process in design and the development of design environments. We present some novel results about `group think', showing that real groups foster refinement of ideas while nominal groups foster duplication of ideas