Creating Creativity:User Interfaces for Supporting Innovation
BEN SHNEIDERMAN
University of Maryland
A challenge for human-computer interaction researchers and user interface designers is to construct information technologies that support creativity.This ambitious goal can be at-tained by building on an adequate understanding of creative processes.This article offers a four-phase framework for creativity that might assist designers in providing effective tools for users:(1)Collect:learn from previous works stored in libraries,the Web,etc.;(2)Relate: consult with peers and mentors at early,middle,and late stages;(3)Create:explore,compose, evaluate possible solutions;and(4)Donate:disseminate the results and contribute to the libraries.Within this integrated framework,this article proposes eight activities that require human-computer interaction research and advanced user interface design.A scenario about an architect illustrates the process of creative work within such an environment.
Categories and Subject Descriptors:H.5.2[Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces;H.5.3[Information Interfaces and Presentation]:Group and Organiza-tion Interfaces
General Terms:Design,Human Factors
Additional Key Words and Phrases:Creativity support tools,direct manipulation,graphical user interfaces,human-computer interaction,information visualization
1.INTRODUCTION
People have long relied on technology for information preservation and dissemination.Ancient traders recorded contracts on clay tablets;religious scribes hand copied illuminated manuscripts on parchments;and Guten-berg applied his printing press to reproducing bibles.Print media led to dramatic changes in society,and then modern broadcast media shook the world further with even more rapid and widespread dissemination.Today, This work was supported in part by IBM Research’s University Partner Program and the US Census Bureau.
Author’s address:Department of Computer Science Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies,and the Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland,College Park,MD20742.
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Creating Creativity:User Interfaces for Supporting Innovation•115 even in remote locales,most people have seen television and heard radio. The World Wide Web is dramatically transforming society by providing greater user control and initiative.
But information preservation and dissemination are only the first two uses of information technologies.A third application is rapid two-way communication among people at ever greater speed and lower cost.Writing letters was a rare process among the literate members of ancient societies, but making phone calls is now widespread,and sending email is becoming common.
A fourth use for information technologies is to support the creation of knowledge and art.Even into the20th Century,scientists,inventors, novelists,and painters were seen as specially gifted citizens whose rare creative productions were treasured.Photography shook the art world because it enabled
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the majority to produce striking images rapidly at low cost.Similarly,information technologies could be harnessed to make cre-ativity more common.Not every artwork,novel,photo,or digital product is creative,but facilitating broad access to powerful tools expands the poten-tial.
Information technologies that allow more people to be more creative more of the time are likely to have profound effects on every institution[Johnson 1997].Education could expand from acquiring facts,studying existing knowledge,and developing critical thinking,to include more emphasis on creating novel artifacts,insights,or performances.Medicine’s shift from applying standard treatments to tailoring treatments for each patient, reflects the trend to personalization that is already ascendant in marketing and media.Expectations of teachers,lawyers,and designers are likely to rise as creativity is expected on more occasions from more people.These changes will be welcomed by some,but resisted by others.The challenge to leaders and participants will be to preserve appropriate elements of exist-ing knowledge work while shaping new technologies and then integrating them into the workplace.Standards for creative work will continue to evolve;computing logarithms by John Napier was a great breakthrough in 1614,but is now seen as merely a mechanical operation that is embedded in calculators.
This article begins with three perspectives on creativity:inspirationalist, structuralist,and situationalist.
Section3focuses on evolutionary creativ-ity,rather than revolutionary or impromptu creativity.Section4reviews and refines the genex(generator of excellence)proposal,a four-phase integrated framework to support creativity[Shneiderman1998c].Design-ers who follow the genex framework can create powerful tools that enable users to be more creative more of the time.This article’s main contribution is the identification of eight activities that support creativity.This list of activities implies a research agenda for human-computer interaction theo-reticians,designers,software engineers,and evaluators.
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2.THREE PERSPECTIVES ON CREATIVITY
The large literature on creativity offers diverse perspectives[Boden1990; Couger1996;Gardner1994].1Some writers,I will call them inspirational-ists,emphasize the remarkable“Aha!”moments in which a dramatic breakthrough magically appears.Stories of Archimedes(3rd Century B.C.) jumping from his bath screaming“Eureka!”as he discovered hydrostatics or Freidrich August Kekule’s(1829–1869)dream-given insight about ben-zene’s ring stru
cture emphasize the intuitive aspects of creativity.Most inspirationalists are also quick to point out that“luck favors the prepared mind,”thereby turning to the study of how preparation and incubation lead to moments of illumination.The inspirationalists also recognize that cre-ative work starts with problem formulation and ends with evaluation plus refinement.They acknowledge the balance of1%inspiration and99% perspiration—a flash of insight followed by much hard work to produce a practical result.
Those who emphasize this inspirational model promote techniques for brainstorming,free association,lateral thinking[DeBono1973],and diver-gence.They advocate strategies to break an innovator’s existing mind set and somehow perceive the problem with fresh eyes.Since they want innovators to break from familiar solutions,their recommendations include travel to exotic destinations with towering mountains or peaceful water-falls.Inspirationalists talk about gifted individuals,but usually stress that creativity-inducing thought processes can be taught.
The playful nature of creativity means that software support for inspira-tionalists emphasizes free association using textual or graphical prompts to elicit novel ideas.Inspirationalists are often oriented to visual techniques for presenting relationships and for perceiving solutions.They would be sympathetic to information and scientific visualization strategies that helped users understand previo
us work and explore potential solutions. Many writers and software developers of tools such as IdeaFisher or MindMapper encourage two-dimensional layouts of loosely connected con-cept nodes to avoid a linear or hierarchical structure.The casual style and freedom from judgment that are implicit in sketching are encouraged. Inspirationalists would also appreciate templates as starting points for a creative leap,as long as powerful tools enable them to explore fresh combinations.
A second group of writers on creativity,the structuralists,emphasizes more orderly approaches[Mayer1992].They stress the importance of studying previous work and using methodical techniques to explore the possible solutions exhaustively.When a promising solution is found,the innovator evaluates strengths and weaknesses,compares it to existing solutions,and refines the promising solution to make it implementable. Structuralists teach orderly methods of problem solving such as Polya’s four steps in Polya[1957]:
1See also Charles Cave’s“Creativity Web”at ail.au/˜caveman/Creative/. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction,Vol.7,No.1,March2000.
Creating Creativity:User Interfaces for Supporting Innovation•117
(1)Understanding the problem
(2)Devising a planstkx
(3)Carrying out the plan
(4)Looking back
For structuralists,libraries and Web sites of previous work are impor-tant,but the key software support comes in the form of spreadsheets, programmable simulations,and domain-specific scientific/engineering/ana-lytical/mathematical models.These software tools support“what-if”pro-cesses of trying out assumptions to assess their impact on the outcomes. They often show processes with visual animations.Structuralists are usually visual thinkers but their preferred tools are for drawing flow charts,decision trees,and structured diagrams.Since they favor methodi-cal techniques,they are likely to appreciate software support for step-by-step exploration,with the chance to go back,make changes,and try again.
A third group,the situationalists,emphasizes the social and intellectual context as a key part of the creative process.They see creativity as embedded in a community of practice with changing standards,requiring a social process for approval from scientific journal editors,museum cura-tors,or literary prize juries.For example,Csikszentmihalyi[1993]sees three components to creativity:
(1)domain,such as mathematics or biology,“consists of a set of symbols,
rules,and procedures.”
(2)field which“includes all the individuals who act as gatekeepers to the
domain.It is their job to decide whether a new idea,performance,or product should be included in the domain.”
马自达俱乐部(3)individual person whose creativity is manifest“when a person using the
symbols of a given domain such as music,engineering,business,or mathematics 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.”
Situationalists are most likely to talk about the influence of family, teachers,peers,and mentors.They consider the influence of challenges from memorable teachers,the strong desire to create,and the pursuit of recognition.For situationalists,vital user interfaces are those that support access to previous work in the domain,consultation with members of the field,and dissemination of results to interested members of the field. These three perspectives on creativity—inspirationalism,structuralis
m, and situationalism—are all useful in shaping user interfaces to support creative work.With careful design,these perspectives can sometimes be combined.User interface designers can develop tools that stimulate inspi-ration based on previous work,link to associated ideas,and provide templates for action.Designers can build structured tools for exhaustive exploration,which is already a common strategy in computing.Designers
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偏心轴承can also facilitate consultation by email and more refined methods,to support the social strategies of the situationalists.Section4expands on these possibilities. 3.LEVELS OF CREATIVITY
Only some knowledge work or art products are creative.Much work is merely repetitive application of rules or copying,but could be competent original work or could rise to the level of creative work.A professor’s speech may occasionally include rote memorized phrases,but usually it contains original sentences.However,inspired lectures and creative rhetoric—such as Martin Luther King’s“I Have a D
三项制度改革ream”speech—are rare.Similarly, redrawing a travel map to your home is copying;doodling on an envelope may be original,but Picasso’s drawings in the Vollard Suite reach the level of creative work.The proposals in this article are intended to support creative,not merely original,work. The large literature on creativity considers diverse levels of aspiration [Boden1990].A restricted definition would focus on great breakthroughs and paradigm-shifting innovations[Kuhn1996].Einstein’s relativity the-ory,Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s double-helix,or Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”are often cited as major creative events.Such a definition confines discussion to rare revolutionary events and a small number of Nobel Prize candidates.A looser definition would include what Kuhn referred to as normal science,useful evolutionary contributions that refine and apply existing paradigms[Basalla1988].Evolutionary acts of creativ-ity include doctors making cancer diagnoses,lawyers preparing briefs,or photo editors producing magazine stories.Their work is important in changing someone’s life by medical care,legal practice,or journalist report-ing and is made public so that it can be assessed by others.Evolutionary creativity is the focus of this article,in part because it is most likely to be helped by software tools.There is a chance that software tools that support evolutionary creativity may also help produce revolutionary breakthroughs. On the other hand,it is possible that software tools that support evolution-ary creativity restrict thinking or even discourage paradigm shifts.
A third,still broader,definition of creativity is conceivable—impromptu or personal creativity.Can lively conversation or attentive parenting be considered as parts of the creativity spectrum?These more spontaneous and private activities may be creative in a broad sense,but since they seem harder to support and evaluate,they are not considered in this analysis. They are assessed on a personal basis and are less likely to have enduring impact on a wide range of people.
The focus of this article is not on revolutionary or impromptu creativity, but on evolutionary creativity.This still covers a wide range of possibilities. Developing software support tools for evolutionary creativity according to the three perspectives identified in this article—inspirationalism,structur-alism,and situationalism—is a sufficient challenge.
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ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction,Vol.7,No.1,March2000.
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