On How Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation While Using Information Technology: A Research Agenda for Robust Triangulation

Abstract

Our minds tend to frequently drift away from present technologyrelated situations and tasks. Against this background, we seek to provide a better understanding of mind-wandering episodes while using information technology and its link to decisive variables of Information Systems research, such as performance, creativity and flow. Since the academic literature still lacks reliable and validated measurements that can fully account for all facets of mind-wandering episodes while using information technology, our work addresses this gap by presenting a way to triangulate data in the context of a digital insight problem-solving task. This new approach enables researchers to further investigate the effects of spontaneous thought in technology-related settings and is a promising building block for the development of neuroadaptive systems.

Investigating Mind-Wandering Episodes While Using Digital Technologies: An Experimental Approach Based on Mixed-Methods

“…In contrast to initial research that stresses the negative effects, the more current literature refers to mind wandering as a positive feature and as something purposeful we all experience [4]. Specifically, mind wandering can promote problem-solving and creative skills [5,6]. Such skills are highly relevant Information Systems (IS) phenomena because creativity is a crucial characteristic for knowledge workers [7].…”