Within the change of design paradigm, design problems need to be solved not by only one designer, but by expert group of various backgrounds and group thinking gets more and more emphasized in design problem solving nowadays.
With the appearance of new media, group thinking has confronted with time of change. EBS - electronic brainstorming system - appeared on the 80’s represents the new kind of group thinking with powerful media of today. The change of expression media make not only the result of group thinking but also the way of group thinking changed and EBS has constructed totally new domain of group thinking.
The aim of this paper is to propose new way of group thinking based on PDA. In the group thinking on the design works, there has been two kinds of limitation for the traditional media. The first one is limitation of time and place and the second one is lack of expression way. PDA has possibility of application for design group thinking for its ubiquity and visual way of expression and can be supposed to get over the limitation on the design group thinking. IdeaSync developed on this assumption is the tool based on PDA, for the creative group thinking for designers. Through out of the study, IdeaSync is tested to find the differences with the traditional media and to demonstrate the assumption that by using the PDA we can get over the limitation of the traditional design group thinking. The result of test shows us that three important point. 1) The ubiquity and visual way of expression can make design group thinking more effective. 2) Group thinking based on PDA are predominant over the traditional way on the quantity of idea and diversity of idea that is the most important factor of group thinking. 3) But group thinking based on PDA can not improve the creativity of idea compared with the traditional way. Synthetically, group thinking based on PDA can be applied into design process and can make the design work more effective.
