Abstract

Information technology professionals frequently need to reduce and clarify ideas. The convergence patterns of collaboration-reduce and clarify are key in helping a group focus effort on issues that are worthy of further attention. This study furthers understanding convergence patterns by exploring and characterizing the effects of a FastFocus intervention on an ideation artifact. Researchers conducted an observational case study of executives and staff addressing a real task within a large it intensive organization. Three sets of artifacts were analyzed from three groups. Analysis of the problem statements generated during a problem identification and clarification session revealed several implications about convergence interventions. The FastFocus thinkLet reduced the number of concepts from 620 down to 145, a reduction of 76%. Ambiguity dropped from 55% in the ideation artifact to 6% in the converged artifact. Implications for brainstorming instructions were identified that may contribute to reduced ambiguity in ideation artifacts.

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