Interdependency between average novelty, individual average novelty, and variety

Abstract

Idea generation is an important part of the engineering design process, and therefore significant research efforts have focused on developing methods to support designers in generating ideas. A key factor is the measurement of ideation effectiveness. The effectiveness of idea generation methods can be measured using metrics such as novelty, variety, quantity, and quality. Average novelty (AN) of a set of ideas is also used as one of the ideation metrics. However, the interdependency between AN and variety has been given little attention. An investigation of the interdependency between these metrics is important to enhance our understanding of the metrics of ideation, and thereby to develop methods for improving ideation effectiveness. This article examines the interdependency between AN and variety. In addition, the metric ‘individual average novelty (IAN)’ has been introduced, and the interdependency between ‘IAN’ and variety has been investigated.