Introduction to Workshop Report
Ben
Shneiderman,
Gerhard
Fischer,
Mary
Czerwinski, Microsoft Research
Mitch Resnick,
MIT Media Lab
Brad Myers,
As Galileo struggled to view Jupiter through his newly built
telescope, he adjusted the lenses and saw four twinkling points of light
nearby. After recording their positions
carefully, Galileo compared them to his drawings from previous nights. His conclusion
that Jupiter had four moons circling it was a profound insight with far
reaching implications.
Paradigm
shifting breakthroughs make for great stories, but normal science is equally
important in the evolutionary development of science, engineering, and
medicine. Large and small breakthroughs
are often made by scientists, engineers, designers, and other professionals who
have access to advanced tools. The
telescopes and microscopes of previous generations are giving way to advanced
user interfaces on computer tools that enable exploratory search,
visualization, collaboration, and composition.
Creativity,
innovation, discovery, and exploration are potent concepts in academic
communities, leading companies, and visionary circles. Enthusiasts envision accelerating innovation
through advanced science collaboratories, design environments, open source communities,
and knowledge management tools. They promote idea generation and brainstorming
tools for divergent thinking followed by knowledge organization and concept
mapping software for convergent processing.
Testimonials from developers and users celebrate rapid genomic database
search, shared astronomy laboratories, open physics preprint archives, and potent
engineering design tools. Similar enthusiasm flows from users of compelling
screenwriting software, flexible music composition packages, and impressive
video-editing software.
The
promise of making more people more creative more of the time is compelling, but
research on creativity support tools is just beginning. Proposed support tools are meant to serve
individuals as they grapple with problems, as well as cross-disciplinary teams
working in close collaboration even when separated by distance. Even more
ambitious is the provision of social creativity support tools for larger
communities working in rich socio-technical environments over longer time
periods. Expectations are high and
belief in beneficial outcomes is great, but much work remains to be done to
develop a respected academic discipline with validated results.
Interest
in creativity is growing. Computing companies, such as Hewlett-Packard feature
‘innovation’ as their expertise, while Intel and Microsoft present appealing
television commercials that promise to empower young minds with technology
(‘Your potential, Our passion’). Consulting
companies claim expertise and software entrepreneurs promote products with
little more than testimonial support. Websites
promote a range of creativity support tools, novel processes, and educational
seminars.
A
small number of cognitive and computer scientists, information systems
researchers, and industrial designers have begun to develop theories and
software tools that may have widespread benefits, but their work could be
dramatically accelerated with increased research support. These researchers often focus on serving
professionals such as business decision makers, biologists exploring genomic
databases, designers developing novel consumer products, or children in (and
out of) classrooms. At the same time there is a history of collaborative
projects between technologists and new media artists, musicians, poets, and
writers that are inspiring new tools. Another lively source of ideas is from
innovative educational environments for children and students. For each of
these projects novel research methods could also accelerate our understanding
of what software improvements are needed.
The
workshop report includes two major sections that discuss research methods that
are appropriate for studying creativity support tools and initial guidelines
for the design of creativity support tools. The audience for this report includes research
managers in government, industry, and universities, as well as researchers
interested in exploring these new directions. Additional sections cover:
-
the
relationship to work of new media artists, indicating what can be learned from
this community that strongly identifies with the notions of creative work
products
-
the
role of search tools and information visualization
-
a
survey of efforts around the world related to creativity tools
-
a
set of seven issues discussed during the workshop
-
a
review of creativity and distributed intelligence
-
a
set of future research directions
The
remainder of this introduction reviews current thinking about creativity and
describes the workshop outcomes.
Current thinking about
creativity
The
potential for enhancing human creativity has been a recurring theme of
visionary thinkers such as Edward DeBono whose ‘lateral thinking’ ideas have
had a warm reception, internationally, but a cool reception from academics. Dan Couger’s review of 22 creativity methods
included the classic ones such as the methods described by Hadamard, reporting
on Poincare: Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. Recent
variations, include these design steps for engineering (Adams et al., 2003,
Atman et al., 2003):
•
Problem
definition – identify need
•
Gather
information
•
Generate
ideas – brainstorm & list alternatives
•
Modeling
– describe how to build
•
Feasibility
Analysis
•
Evaluation
– compare alternatives
•
Decision
– select one solution
•
Communication
– write or present to others
•
Implementation
During
the past decade respected psychologists who work on creativity, such as Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi (his books include the widely cited Creativity (1996) and
Finding Flow(1997)),
have given a more compelling foundation. Csikszentmihalyi made two major contributions. First, his structured interviews with 91
creative people (Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, leading artists, corporate
gurus, etc.) led to a thoughtful characterization of three key components for
understanding creativity:
1) Domain: e.g. mathematics or biology, "consists of
a set of symbols, rules
and procedures”
2) Field: "the individuals who act as gatekeepers
to the domain...decide whether a
new idea, performance, or product
should be included”
3) Individual: creativity is
"when a person... has a new idea or sees a new pattern,
and when this novelty is selected by the
appropriate field for inclusion in the
relevant domain"
This
characterization focuses on the individual but clearly makes creativity a
social process, since an individual’s work becomes creative only when judged by
others. Csikszentmihalyi’s second
contribution was the development of the concept of flow which is a state of mind in which an individual is performing
skilled work at an appropriate level of challenge between anxiety and
boredom. Individuals in the flow state
are focused on their task and moving towards their goal, often with little awareness
of their surroundings. They are less aware of time, often spending hours deeply
engaged in their challenge. While flow
is not directly tied to creativity, many people engaged in creative tasks
report being in such a flow state.
Robert
Sternberg’s remarkable edited collection, the Handbook of Creativity (1999), has drawn popular and
academic interest. This Handbook, and numerous other books,
provide useful intellectual foundations concerning motivations, strategies, and
assessment for human creative work. A particularly appealing chapter by
Nickerson offers 12 steps to teaching creativity:
•
Establish
Purpose and Intention
•
Build
Basic Skills
•
Encourage
Acquisition of Domain-specific Knowledge
•
Stimulate
and Reward Curiosity and Exploration
•
Build
Motivation
•
Encourage
Confidence and Risk Taking
•
Focus
on Mastery and Self-Competition
•
Promote
Supportable Beliefs
•
Provide
Balance
•
Provide
Opportunities for Choice and Discovery
•
Develop
Self Management (Meta-Cognitive Skills)
•
Teach
Techniques and Strategies for Facilitating Creative Performance
All
of these discussions of creativity are helpful, but we propose to push forward by
focusing on creativity support tools that
promote, accelerate, and facilitate creativity.
Just as Galileo and Jefferson employed telescope and pantograph,
contemporary innovators use computer-based software tools. We see compelling
opportunities for dramatic improvements of tools for work in the sciences, engineering,
medicine, knowledge work, humanities, arts, and beyond.
Since
many descriptions of creativity focus on the individual, it is important to
balance this view with an appreciation of the importance of supporting
creativity in small teams and larger communities. Scientific papers in mature fields such as
physics and biology often have teams consisting of dozens of authors from
multiple disciplines who contribute to a research result.
Creativity
has been rightly recognized as a key to economic growth and social
transformation in the well-document analysis by Richard Florida (2002), The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's
Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. His later work The Flight of the Creative Class (2005)
makes the case even stronger, positing a global future shaped by communities
that lure creative people by emphasizing the 3 T’s: Technology, Talent and
Tolerance. If
Some
commentators believe that creativity is the domain of the rare individual who
arises only a few times in each century.
This older notion celebrates historic figures such as
Awareness
of the benefits of focusing on creativity comes from the National Academy of
Sciences report Beyond Productivity:
Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity (2003), which argues that
the challenge for the 21st century is to “work smarter, not harder.”
This report and others identify the impact of creativity support tools on
global competitiveness, successful civic infrastructures, scientific
leadership, and educated citizenry.
Workshop Goals
In
assembling a group of leading researchers and graduate students, we sought to
create a new community of interest around creativity support tools for
individuals, teams, and communities. We believed the workshop on creativity
support tools could:
1) Accelerate
the process of disciplinary convergence: Creativity support tool research
must bridge multiple disciplines including computer science, psychology, human-computer
interaction, information systems, information visualization, and software
engineering. Researchers from one discipline may not appreciate the relevance
of and rarely reference outside their discipline, thereby failing to take
advantage of progress already made by others. Promoting awareness of
interdisciplinary work would accelerate progress for all and improve quality.
Developing
an understanding of how work in one discipline is useful to another would help
advance the research process. A natural
task is to reframe computer science research on user interface building tools
and on collaboration technology as contributions to creativity support.
2) Promote
rigorous research methods: The commercial promoters of current creativity
support tools emphasize testimonials rather than research results. Attempts to apply controlled experimentation
have been only marginally successful, because lab-like settings and toy-like
tasks are fundamentally at odds with the goals of innovative thinking. Rigorous research methods in creativity
research will have to be developed because insight, discovery, and innovation
are so difficult to asses. Researchers will benefit from development of
appropriate benchmark tasks and replicable evaluation methods.
3) Increase the ambitiousness of research programs:
Creativity support researchers have proposed theoretical frameworks and innovative
ideas that are slowly being refined through testing with small groups of users. With increased funding these projects could
grow and researchers could grapple with more significant design issues. Also
establishing an effective community of researchers will enable more extensive
collaborations and support larger scale projects.
We
believed that existing guidelines can be refined and applied to improve many
software tools. Such tools are one of
computer science’s most fruitful contributions, amplifying the skills of
millions of users through word processors, email, web browsers, spreadsheets, and
graphics programs. Current tools are
merely the first generation, which now can be enhanced with richer creativity
support features.
Workshop Outcomes
The
lively discussions before, during and after the workshop indicate that there
are compelling issues for discussion. One participant made the memorable
statement in his opening presentation: “I have been studying collaboration for
20 years, but have only thought of creativity for two hours.” Post workshop
comments by email emphasized the fresh perspective, such as this comment from a
respected senior researcher: “Absolutely the most stimulating meeting I have
been to in long time.” Another
participant wrote “A magnificent effort to bring together such a diverse range
of people and then have them align their research so well along a single
axis.” And finally one of the graduate
students commented “very stimulating and energizing … I had trouble falling
asleep… because my head was filled with new ideas… I left with dozens of pages
of notes to follow up on in my own research.”
Maintaining
such enthusiasm is difficult, especially in this community of active
researchers who are engaged in multiple projects. Another challenge is the interdisciplinary
nature of this work, and the need for intense longitudinal case studies. Initiating new research directions is
difficult, but the topic of creativity support tools could gain ground if there
were acknowledgement for its importance among funding agency leaders.
The
authors of this report seek to promote interest in creativity support tools by accelerating
the process of disciplinary convergence.
We aspire to bridge computer science, HCI, psychology, and related
disciplines to encourage ambitious research projects that could yield potent
tools for many people to use. We came to
a consensus about the outcome that would:
·
Accelerate research and education on creativity support
tools by:
o
Making the case for increased funding for creativity
support tool research
o
Encouraging investment in substantial multi-year
longitudinal case studies
o
Proposing
ways to create greater interest among researchers, students, policymakers, and
industrial developers.
o
Provide
appropriate software infrastructure and toolkits so that creativity support
tools can be more easily built.
o
·
Promote rigorous multidimensional evaluation methods by:
o
Understanding the benefits and limits to controlled
experimentation
o
Developing observation strategies for longitudinal
case studies
o
Collecting careful field study, survey, and deep
ethnographical data
·
Rethink user interfaces to support creativity by offering
guidelines for:
o
Design tools for individuals and socio-technical
environments for groups.
o
Promote low thresholds, high ceilings, wide walls,
and powerful history-keeping
o
Support exploratory search, visualization,
collaboration, and composition
References
Atman, C., Turns, J., Cardella, M., and
Adams, R. S., The Design Processes of Engineering Educators: Thick Descriptions
and Potential Implications, Design Thinking Research Symposium VI Proceedings,
Couger, D., Creativity & Innovation in Information Systems Organizations,
Boyd & Fraser Publ. Co., Danvers, MA (1996).
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention,
Csikszentmihalyi, M.,
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Finding Engagement with Everyday Life, Basic Books,
De Bono, E., Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, Harper
Florida, R, The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's
Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Basic Books, New
York (2002).
Sternberg, R. (Editor), Handbook
of Creativity,
von Hippel, E., Democratizing Innovation MIT Press,