Research Methods for Innovation: Nominal Group Technique vs. Delphi

Innovation Methods

For information systems (IS) research there are two innovation methods which lend themselves to solving complex problems.  Depending on the type of problem being worked and how much information is known on the topic each has strengths and weaknesses.

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

The NGT is a consensus-planning tool used to elicit opinions from groups of people with a common background or shared experience (Dobbie et. al, 2004).  It is an iterative process that begins with a well-formed question being posed to the group.  The method is designed to gather both positive and negative responses to the questions and allows each person to share all of their responses, both positive and negative.  With the aid of a facilitator, the individuals write one response at a time on a post-it (this is a silent activity).  Once the participants have captured their responses they each take a turn sharing an idea.  The group discusses the responses and asks for clarifications after all members silently share their ideas.  When all of the ideas/responses are posted, the facilitator or group may combine similar responses into a common response or theme.  Each individual gets a number of votes and allocates them to the responses.  The votes are tallied and a prioritized list of responses is created showing the most popular responses to the proposed questions.

Delphi

The Delphi method is well suited for instances where the researcher is trying to gain a better understanding of a problem, create a forecast, or evaluate potential solutions to complex problems (Skulmoski, Hartman & Krahn, 2007).  The Delphi is also an iterative process that gathers the anonymous inputs from subject matter experts.  This method gathers the inputs, each participant is able to consider the groups responses and clarify their own views in light of new information or progress made by the group as a whole.  The group provides feedback on responses, which are gathered and provided to the original author in a controlled manner.  As the method iterates the experts are able to feed off each other's ideas.  The feedback mechanism used in this method is chosen by the researcher to facilitate further analysis of responses through statistical or qualitative methods.

My Choice

Since my research topic is not well understood, I choose the Delphi method to explore how we humans might become nodes on the internet.  My subject matter experts will be fellow researchers and anyone else who would like to participate in this forum.  We are all users of the internet and therefore we are all subject matter experts on the topic of how we use the internet and what frustrates us about current interfaces.

Forces

Technological:  How might we create an interface which is integrated with our human senses or brain?

Medical: How might we design the interface to be safe for human integration?

References:

Dobbie, A, M Rhodes, J W Tysinger, and J Freeman. "Using a Modified Nominal Group Technique As a Curriculum Evaluation Tool." FAMILY MEDICINE-KANSAS CITY- 36 (2004): 402-406

Skulmoski, G J, F T Hartman, and J Krahn. "The Delphi Method for Graduate Research." Journal of information technology education 6 (2007): 1.