COBRAS - A collaborative brainstorming tool
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Traditional person-to-person group brainstorming suffers from three major limitations: (1) free riding; (2) productivity blocking; and (3) evaluation apprehension. An ideal electronic brainstorming tool should address these shortcomings while retaining the dynamic, interactive nature of group brainstorming. Moreover, while the nominal goal of brainstorming is to maximize the number of ideas generated, a variety of secondary goals have been proposed as also having value[1]. In particular, it has been suggested that brainstorming helps build organizational memory in terms of design decisions and creates a 'status auction'. To address these limitations and secondary goals, we have created an online collaborative mind-mapping tool called COBRAS (Collaborative Online Brainstorming by Roman And Saket). Mind-maps are visual representations of ideas and how they are connected to each other[2]. They are usually laid out like a tree which makes it easy to identify relationships and has been proven to help transfer memory into long-term memory and increase recall[2].
Downloads
 Design document |
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