Traverse the landscape of the mind by walking: an exploration of a new brainstorming practice
This addresses the need for more effective brainstorming practices in software development teams, though it is incremental as it builds on existing brainstorming techniques.
The paper tackled the problem of improving group brainstorming effectiveness in software development by comparing traditional indoor sessions with walking sessions during a mountain walk, finding that walking led to effective idea generation, equal participation, and sustainable mental energy.
Group brainstorming is a well-known idea generation technique, which plays a key role in software development processes. Despite this, the relevant literature has had little to offer in advancing our understanding of the effectiveness of group brainstorming sessions. In this paper we present a research-in-progress on brainstorming while walking, which is a practice built upon the relationship between thinking and walking. The objective is to better understand how to conduct group brainstorming effectively. We compared two brainstorming sessions, one performed during a mountain walk, the other traditionally in a room. Three preliminary findings are obtained: walking can lead to an effective idea generation session; brainstorming while walking can encourage team members to participate in and contribute to the session in an equal manner; and it can help a team to maintain sustainable mental energy. Our study opens up an avenue for future exploration of effective group brainstorming practices.