The influence of the Design Task Description on the course and outcome of idea generation meetings

This paper presents the results of an explorative, comparative protocol analysis of two design meetings that focused on identifying how the style of the Design Task Description influences the course and the outcome of an idea generation meeting. A framework is used to allocate potential influencing factors, including the DTD, and to discuss the various relationships and influences in order to understand the differences in course and outcome of the meetings. The style of the DTD was found to influence the length of the analysis phase and lead to differences in the course of the two idea generation meetings and to a higher idea generation rate.