Collaboration support system based on assessment of created ideas using data envelopment analysis

Abstract

This paper focuses on the creative aspects of collaboration and proposes a method for analyzing created ideas to help designers to enhance designers' creativity during collaborative design projects. The proposed method is based on DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis), analyses ideas created by designers to reveal characteristics and overall effectiveness of each idea, interrelationship between ideas and potentially fruitful directions for improvement of created ideas and exploration of new ideas and aims to help designers explore more sophisticated ideas. To enable smooth collaboration when using the proposed analysis method, this paper also proposes a computerized support system. This system is based on a combination of the analysis method proposed here, and the method for visualizing interactive communication processes proposed in our previous work. Analyzing system analyzes created ideas and visualizes the results from the multiple viewpoints, whereas visualizing system records interactive communication processes among designers and visualizes them in an easy-to-understand way.