Software support for creative problem solving

This paper describes a development effort and an empirical test of a software prototype for stimulating creative problem solving. The software was designed on the basis of a solo brainstorming technique that provided users with external stimuli and exposed them to a large number of ideas over a short period of time. The prototype was empirically tested in the context of issue identification for a natural disaster. The results of the test indicate that users were able to identify on average 40% of all critical issues individually, and over 95% of issues in nominal groups of 4-6 people. These results suggest that collaborative creativity may facilitate optimal performance and learning.