Exploring the Use of Virtual World Technology for Idea-Generation Tasks

While the potential value of Virtual World Technologies (VWTs) lies in their promise to facilitate communication through new and novel forms of collaboration, there is a lack of prior research that examines how VWTs compare to other types of information and communication technologies (ICT) commonly used to support collaborative work. This study investigates the effects of VWTs on group ideation outcomes; specifically, it compares the use of Second Life to a chat environment for idea generation tasks. As hypothesized, groups using VWTs for an idea generation task generated significantly more unique ideas and enjoyed using the environment more than the chat environment. Contrary to our predictions, no significant difference between the two environments was observed for satisfaction, group cohesion, and social presence.