Development of an idea collecting system and the application to GUNGEN

We have developed an idea collecting software, called GMemo running on a personal digital assistant (IBM WorkPad). Users can collect and input ideas in free handwriting using GMemo immediately anytime and anywhere, and use ideas as data for GUNGEN (GroUpware for a New idea GENeration consistent support system) directly. We can re-use the results of GUNGEN as the topic of the next ideas. Nine persons have used GMemo for five months. The results of the application of GMemo show that a total of 290 data were collected and the mean value of characters in one idea was about 26, which was nearly the same as the conventional method of collecting ideas by a paper media. We performed the KJ method (one of the famous idea generation methods in Japan) twice from collected data and the results were very good, reflecting ideas of many people