Intersections of brainstorming rules and social order

Abstract

This paper looks at the use of brainstorming as a method in two successive engineering meetings. Through a close analysis of engineers' interactions I examine how brainstorming rules are used, and often ignored, in the course of the sessions. It is found that engineers rarely explicitly orient to the rules of brainstorming, and that many sequences of interaction appear at first glance to be in breach of brainstorming rules (but are not censured within the meeting as such). Through a set of empirical examples, I develop the case that engineers are principally orienting to social order – the ‘rules’ of social interaction – in preference to the rules of brainstorming. This finding has a number of implications for design research: (a) it enables a reassessment of the nature and use of methods in design, (b) it reveals what other ‘rules’ are in play and found valuable in design activity, and (c) it uncovers aspects of the organisation of collaborative idea generation that have not been previously identified.

Keywords:

• brainstorming
• idea generation
• design methods
• rules
• social order
• conversation analysis
• social organisation

Acknowledgements

Max Eckardt provided invaluable help in finding and examining relevant excerpts from the meetings. Trine Heinemann offered incisive comments on an earlier draft, and did much to nurse my sensitivities to conversation analysis. Naturally, I alone am responsible for the errors that remain.

Notes

1. The notion that ‘brainstorming meetings’ exhibit a distinct modification of the structure of ordinary conversation requires empirical study. Not everything that is called a ‘brainstorming meeting’ may share these structural features, and other interactions that have little or nothing to do with brainstorming may also exhibit them. The discussion of Hester and Francis (2001) is important here – conversational structures do not neatly map to our ordinary stock of categories of events.