Spider Meeting

What is this technique about

Spider Meeting is a fun and interactive idea-generation and evaluation method for while concretising and evaluation of the ideas. It is a combination of brainwriting, pitching and sketching. The aim is to increase the level of detail of the ideas with the help of spinning the web from the outside in and at the same time to filter, i.e. to select the favoured ideas right away. A clear task is obligatory at the beginning. The spider technique is suitable for six to eight participants. Approximately one and half hour should be planned.

Where does it come from 

The Spider Meeting method was inspired by the observation that in methods such as brainstorming, different teams come up with more or less the same approaches. The method basically combines brainwriting with idea concertising and evaluation techniques within the same workshop. Brainwriting differs from brainstorming in that, instead of getting people to discuss ideas out loud, it gets them to write them down and share them anonymously.

For which purposes it is used (why in your engineering teaching)

The Spider Meeting is used as a fun group activity for idea generation and detailing as well as idea evaluation. The outcome of the workshop is one idea, typically visualised by a sketch or a short story board. 

How to use it

To begin the spider web exercise, draw a diagram with 6 to 8 segments, depending on the number of participants. Each person then writes down three to six ideas on post-it notes and places them in the corresponding segment of the spider web. The group then rotates around the table to review the ideas and each member selects two favorites. The chosen ideas are expanded upon with additional thoughts, and presented to the group to gather feedback.

The group then rotates around the table once more, and each person selects their preferred idea from the two that were presented earlier. This idea is further developed with sketches that demonstrate how the idea could work, preferably with a specific target audience in mind. This process results in six well-defined ideas, which are once again presented to the group. From these, one or two ideas are selected for further development in the creativity process.

Pitching works better because you don’t present your own ideas, but someone else’s. This makes the argument for the idea more credible and the other participants accept it more easily. All of a sudden, pitching isn’t about the ego, it’s about the ideas. The suggestions are then polished, analyzed and evaluated.