Gestures as Intrinsic Creativity Support: Understanding the Usage and Function of Hand Gestures in Computer-Mediated Group Brainstorming

Interpersonal communication is essential to group creativity tasks, such as group brainstorming. However, what’s easily overlooked in supporting group creativity is the potential use of nonverbal behavior in communication. When people communicate verbally (e.g., discussing a topic through conversation), they may also co-produce hand movements along with verbal contents as part of the communication process. Going beyond using external interventions for creativity gain, we examine the potential to facilitate worker’s in-conversation gesture use as an intrinsic mechanism for bolstering group creativity. In this paper, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of the usage and function of hand gestures in computer-mediated group brainstorming. Through a laboratory study, we verified that metaphoric gestures, or producing spatial cues with hands to convey intended concepts, can best influence self’s and partner’s idea generation. Also, the positive effect of metaphoric gesture is independent of media richness of communication medium (e.g., whether there’s visibility or not). The results help to fill in the knowledge gap regarding how gesture use may relate to group creativity, and reveal the potential viability of shaping metaphoric gesture use as an intrinsic creativity support.