Ideas Generation and Integration: A Method For Teamwork In A Virtual Environment

Abstract

The ideas generation becomes something fundamental, even outside, of design student education. The challenge presented in our research, following of this paper results, is to correctly implement an intuitive category method (progressive type) to generate solutions, unifying individual proposals or ideas through virtual platform and real-time communication with software or applications. The objective of this first paper is to identify the implementation impact from the perspective of first-use perception, and experience segmented by study area and gender. Our research begins with the design of an idea generation method, from design professionals experience, various tools are integrated and run-in digital platforms. This method was called ICRI from the acronym in Spanish “Ideacion, Categorizacion, Reagrupamiento, Ideación”. Subsequently, this method is applied in two university courses, one with students of design, art, urbanism, and the other course with students of chemical engineering. The application of the method was conducting through the MIRO platform and the communication by ZOOM for remote work. The method consists of two main stages, the initial stage is 4 steps where the students define, investigate, and establish findings, including team formation, to move on to a second stage. This second stage is composed by 4 steps where students generate ideas, review, define and group them, finally the final stage is composed by 5 steps to able to bring to a point of re-grouping, discussion, fusion and writing of new ideas. This method was applied to start a product design process or design strategy. The results revealed a high level of acceptance of the method, highlighting its practicality, rapidity, and functionality to generate ideas, as well as an active participation of the students in an equitable way. Also, the acceptance and perception of equity and equality of generation of ideas between gender was found, in addition to spotlight that no academic profile had a negative influence. The creation of the ICRI method is the consequence of the changes that have been created as a result of the need for virtuality for higher education.