The Effect of Speech Recognition on Computer-Mediated Group Idea Generation

Given the industry’s unprecedented attention and dedication of resources to voice recognition, this paper introduces and explores a novel idea generation technique whereby ideas are captured directly through verbalization rather than forcing group members to type ideas. A group simulator was used to measure the idea generation performance of individuals who input ideas verbally or via typing in the context of nominal and interacting groups. The results clearly indicate that verbal input represents a more desirable mechanism in a computer-mediated idea generation environment. Liberating group members from the keyboard produces remarkable performance gains. Verbalizing ideas helps individuals focus on analytical thinking and leverage group member ideas, ultimately facilitating the creation of ideas pools that are vastly superior in terms of quantity and quality. These effects were found across nominal and interacting groups. The implications of these results for future research and the design of technologies are discussed.