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Information Technology for Creativity
Trial lecture June 21. 2010, NTNU
Birgit R. Krogstie
Creativity: a brief background• Creativity
– from God– as work– as inspiration
• Big C vs. small c creativity• Creativity in psychology
– Guilford’s presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1950
– Cognitive processes– Creative personality and behaviour – Increasing focus on context/environment
• Creativity a topic in many fields– Management, Education, Art, Computer‐Aided Design, Software Engineering, Human‐Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Cooperative Work, ...
Understanding creativity: dimensions to consider
• Big C vs. small c• Artistic vs. Everyday• Romantic vs. Rationalist• Process vs. Product• Innate vs. Acquired • Individual vs. Collective• Universal vs. Culturally determined• A phenomenon in itself or part of other processes (e.g. work, learning, innovation,…)
This presentation
• Information Technology
Outline of what follows
• The individual mind
• Creativity in teams
• Creativity support tools
• Creativity in communities and swarms
The nature of creativity: the individual mind (I)
Origin‐oriented approaches Process‐oriented approaches
PsychoanalystsThrough inner conflicts, products of imagination are externalized through interaction of primitive and mature thinking (Freud 1970)
AssociationistsCreativity based on ability to invoke and explore remote associations in selecting a response to a problem (Mednick 1962)
Humanistic psychologistsNatural creative potential is released through the removal of inhibitions and obstructions, i.e. when there is no inner conflict (Fromm 1959)
Gestalt psychologistsDeterminate restructuring of the whole situation (Wertheimer 1959). The ability to redirect a line of thought in problem solving (Maier 1970)
PsychometriciansNatural creative potential is limited by genetic endowment and can be measured by standard tests (Torrance 1974). ’Divergent’ + ’convergent’ thinking (Guilford 1971).
Information theoristsThe human thinking process can be formalised and simulated. Creative activity is a special class of problem‐solving activity (Newell et al. 1962)
(Couger 1990; Ackhoff and Vergara 1981; Chung 1987)
The nature of creativity: The individual mind (II)• Humans tend to think along predictable lines and be influenced by surface features of problems
• The creative mind is skilled in divergent thinking (Guilford 1962) and lateral thinking (de Bono 1990), utilizing associations from one topic to another
• Three forms of creative thinking, relating to a conceptual space (Boden 1990)– Combinational– Exploratory– Transformational
• Creativity is the intersection of domain‐relevant skills, creativity‐relevant skills, and motivation (Amabile 1996)
Creativity and Feelings (II): Flow (Csikszentmihayi 1990; 1997)
• Enjoyment results when a person has achieved something unexpected, beyond prior expectation
• Enjoyment has some major components:– Tasks with a reasonable chance of completion– Clear goals– Immediate feedback– Deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the frustrations and worries of everyday life.
– Sense of control over our actions– No concern for the self – Alteration of the concept of time, hours can pass in minutes and minutes can look like hours.
Creativity as problem‐solving (II)
Creative thinking is a special kind of problem‐solving (Newell, Shaw and Simon 1958)
“Problem solving is called creative to the extent that one or more of the following conditions are satisfied:
1. The product of the thinking has novelty and value (either for the thinker or for his culture)
2. The thinking is unconventional, in the sense that it requires modification or rejection of previously‐accepted ideas
3. The thinking requires high motivation and persistence: either taking place over a considerable span of time (continuously or intermittently), or occurring at high intensity
4. The problem as initially posed was vague and ill‐defined, so that part of the task was to formulate the problem itself”
The creative process (I): The classic 4 stage model
• Amabile (1996) proposing a fifth stage
• Alternative views include: – dynamic blend of processes
– simultaneous processes
– variation between individuals
Problem/task identification
Preparation(gathering and reactivating relevant
information and resources)
Response generation (seeking and producing potential
responses)
Response validation and communication (testing the possible response against
criteria)
Decision (stop due to success or failure, or return to previous step)
The creative process (I): Formalising the process
(Wang 2009)
• Computers enacting the process
• Producing results
• Supporting research / development of insights about creativity
• Computers good at some types of problem solving, but not all
• Computers supporting humans in their creative process
Creativity in context
• Sociocultural perspective: thinking and activity takes place in a social context
• Csikszentmihalyi (1996) ”An idea or product that deserves the label ’creative’ arises from the synergy of many sources and not only from the mind of a single person”
• Sternberg(1999): ”Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e. original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e. useful, adaptive concerning task constraints)”
Creativity according to Csikszentmihalyi (1997)
DomainFieldIndividual
! Symbolic rules and procedures
Investment theory of creativity (Sternberg & Lubart 1991, 1995)
• Creativity requires a confluence of six resources:
• Creative people are those who are willing and able to ”buy low and sell high” in the realm of ideas
• Creativity is to a large extent a question of willingness to use resources in a certain way
Intellectual skills
Knowledge
Environment MotivationPersonality
Styles of thinking
Types of creative contributions relative to the existing knowledge/paradigms within a field (Sternberg 2006)
• Types of creativity that accept current paradigms and attempt to extend them1. Replication2. Redefinition3. Forward incrementation4. Advance forward incrementation
• Types of creativity that reject current paradigms and attempt to replace them5. Redirection6. Reconstruction/Redirection7. Reinitiation
• A type of creativity that synthesizes current paradigms8. Integration
Fostering creativity in a team • Effective group problem solving (Kurtzberg and Amabile 2000) can occur with:– The right combination of personalities– The right amount of diversity (Fischer 2004; Paletz and Schunn 2010)
– Appropriate levels of resource and reward interdependence
– Cooperative process behaviours (e.g. effect of one negative/positive individual (Zimmermann 2006))
– Effective use of time• Brainstorming: Generally works better individually than in groups due to several social psychological phenomena (e.g. ’groupthink’)
The Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework
• A.F. Osborn (1963) the ’father of brainstorming’
• Process of six phases, each of which start by diverging and end by converging
Supporting a creative process: An example from requirements engineering (Maiden et al. 2007)
• Workshops based on established models of creativity– Sternberg’s definition (novelty and appropriateness)
– The CPS model
– Boden’s three forms of creative thinking
• Main approach: In a team, establish a solution space, then transform it– Supporting exploratory creativity by use of analogies (e.g. be presented with a domain similar to the solution domain)
– Supporting transformational creativity by having people envisage that constraints are removed
– Supporting combinatorial creativity through storyboarding
• Creative periods each based on first diverging, next converging
Creativity support tools
Creativity tools can be characterized along three dimensions which can be described by analogy to sports equipment (Nakaoji 2005)
”Dumbbells”Tools to train people to develop creativity, or skills of creative thinking
”Running shoes”Tools to support people’s creative process while engaging in a creation task
”Skis”Tools enabling people to have new kinds of experiences that they would not be able to have without using these tools
Creativity support tools
(Schneiderman 2007)
Spotfire Decision Site: Learning about the role of proteins in cell division (Shneiderman 2007)
Autodesk Inventor’s Design Accelerators:
Making a custom gearbox (Shneiderman 2007)Impact of CAD tools on the creativity of the designers (Robertson and Radcliffe 2009)
1)Enhanced visualization and communication ☺2)Circumscribed thinking
The functional capability of the tools limit the solutions available to the team
3)Bounded ideation The best environment for idea generation tends to occur away from computers
4)Premature fixation As CAD models become more detailed during the course of a project, there is a strong disincentive to make major changes to them
Spore (I)
Spore (II)
Design principles for creativity tools (Resnick et al. 2005)“While it is difficult to study ‘creativity’ itself, we can study the process by which creative people and teams work, and embody their best practices in tools that can aid others in emulating those processes.”
Focus: Composition tools 1. Support Exploration2. Low Threshold, High Ceiling, and Wide Walls3. Support Many Paths and Many Styles4. Support Collaboration5. Support Open Interchange6. Make It As Simple As Possible ‐ and Maybe Even Simpler7. Choose Black Boxes Carefully8. Invent Things That You Would Want To Use Yourself9. Balance user suggestions with observation and participatory
processes10. Iterate, Iterate ‐ Then Iterate Again11. Design for Designers12. Evaluation of Tools
Computational systems and environments that people can use to generate, modify, interact and play with, and/or share both logical and/or physical representations (Schneiderman 2006)
Particular HCI considerations for creativity tools• Nakaoji (2005):
– A need to make tools engage in order to make people experience flow.
– Relationship between user and tool better described as embodiment than use.
– Information provided by tools needs to be trustful.– Logical aestethics of systems are important for people to regard tools as expressive media.
– Utility of tools described not necessarily in terms of objectivemeasurements, but subjective ones such as value.
• Need for an extended vocabulary to discuss interactive systems, beyond those deriving from a work‐oriented view (Löwgren 2006)– Playability– Seductivity– Fluency– Also, ambiguity may be a positive property.
Creativity of communities and ”swarms”
Creativity of communities and swarms• Swarm creativity (Gloor 2006)
– Wikipedia
• Mycorrhizae (Engeström 2007) – Open source software development
• Crowdsourcing (Brabham 2008) and user‐driven innovation (Bar and Ris 2000)– Nokia Sports Tracker
– Creative City project in Milan (Design Concept Lab, Politecnico di Milano)
• Collaboratories (Farooq 2007): Supporting creativity in distributed scientific communities and providing shared access to scarce resources (e.g. data, equipment)– Synaptic Leap
– CSEP (Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability )
www.cseptesting.org
Requirements for supporting creativity in scientific collaboratories (Farooq et a. 2005)
• Support divergent & convergent thinking
• Support development of shared objectives
• Support reflectivity
A prototype workspace for a collaboratory (Farooq et al. 2005)
Thanks to my helpful colleagues ☺