The World Wide Web as a tool for creative design: Current issues and prospects for research

Julien Nelson & Todd LubartLaboratoire Adaptations Travail IndividusInstitut de Psychologie, Université Paris Descartesjulien.nelson@parisdescartes.fr

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ACM Web Science 2013 Workshop on Creativity and attention in the age of the Web

Research questions

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Creativity

• The ability to produce work that is both novel and adapted to task constraints (Lubart & Sternberg, 1999)

Design

• The process whereby something unknown emerges from what is known (Hatchuel & Weil, 2003)

• Firms need to be able to innovate repeatedly and reliably and to master the creative design process

• World Wide Web technology is often used in creative design

How can the Web support the creative design process ?What are the underlying research issues ?

What further web-based technologies can be used to assist creative design ?

How can the Web serve the creative design process ?A descriptive framework

• Shneiderman’s(2000) genex framework (generator of excellence)

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Component of genex Examples of computational tools

Collect information from an existing domain of knowledge

Digital librariesSearch services

Create innovations using advanced tools

Art, design, and architecture toolsSimulations and models

Consult with peers and mentors in the field

Newsgroups

Disseminate the results widely Email, social networking

• Creative design can be described as a series of successive cycles of creative divergence (i.e. idea generation) and creative convergence (i.e. idea selection)

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Designbrief

Endproduct

Collecting information

Relating to peers and mentors

Creating and diffusing new ideas

How can the Web serve the creative design process ?A descriptive framework

• The World Wide Web can therefore serve as a tool for creative design in three major ways :

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As a source of creative inspiration

As a forum for collaborative design

As a means to generate and share new design ideas

How can the Web serve the creative design process ?A descriptive framework

What are the underlying research issues ?The Web as a source of creative inspiration

• There is a strong research interest in the inspirational practices of designers

• Many search engines have been developed to provide designers with (primarily visual) sources of inspiration (e.g. Corbis, Gettyimages)

• In addition, pieces of software and hardware have been designed to assist inspiration-gathering in designers 6

Cabinet (Keller et al., 2009)

TRENDS (Bouchard et al., 2008)

What are the underlying research issues ?The Web as a source of creative inspiration

• These interfaces can be assessed following typical dimensions of usability and user experience (UX)

• More recent studies (e.g. Bonnardel & Zenasni, 2010) have focused on the impactof the images supplied by these systems on creative performance

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Cabinet (Keller et al., 2009)

TRENDS (Bouchard et al., 2008)

What are the underlying research issues ?The Web as a forum for creative design

• Web-based technology has led to the emergence of new types of design collectives, e.g. in the case of open-source software design

• Many studies have focused on the dynamics of communication and work in these collectives

• The focus is on the interplay between the social roles of the members of these online collectives, the cognitive processes involved in creative design, and the exploration of virtual work spaces

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What are the underlying research issues ?The Web as a forum for creative design

• A strong focus on consensus generation and creative convergence (e.g. Sack et al., 2006), not on creative divergence

• This seems ready to change, as some recent studies have taken an interest in the dynamics of online communities for social innovation (Paulini et al., in press).

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What are the underlying research issues ?The Web as a means to generate and share design ideas

• Historically, a strong focus on HCI and creative divergence with the work on Electronic BrainStorming (EBS)

• The goal of these studies : to assess the process gains and losses related to « normal » brainstorming situations and to the use of electronic systems, e.g. evaluation apprehension and social loafing vs. anonymity and social facilitation

• Most systems are designed for synchronous interactions in small groups. Few systems integrate web connectivity. 10

• The World Wide Web can therefore serve as a tool for creative design in three major ways :

• The next step forward would be to design innovative design tools that can work at several levels

• We are currently involved in such a project11

As a source of creative inspiration

As a forum for collaborative design

As a means to generate and share new design ideas

What further web-based technologies could be used to support creative design?

• Project CREATIVENESS : CREative AcTIvities in Virtual ENvironmEnt SpaceS

• A three-year project funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche

• Three partners : • LATI Université Paris Descartes • LCPI Arts et Metiers ParisTech• PsyCLE Aix-Marseille Université

• An experimental study of the benefits of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) for creative design

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What further web-based technologies could be used to support creative design?

What further web-based technologies could be used to support creative design?

• We are working on one of the most popular MUVEs : Second Life

• SL is very much centered on creativity : it is possible for Residents to display, share, or sell various creative productions

• SL has already been envisioned as a tool for creative work (Ward & Sonnenborn, 2009 : Uribe & Cabra, 2010) 13

What further web-based technologies could be used to support creative design?

• We are working on one of the most popular MUVEs : Second Life

• SL is very much centered on creativity : it is possible for Residents to display, share, or sell various creative productions

• SL has already been envisioned as a tool for creative work (Ward & Sonnenborn, 2009 : Uribe & Cabra, 2010) 14

What further web-based technologies could be used to support creative design?

• In CREATIVENESS, we are carrying out a series of experimental studies in order to understand the effects on creative performance of various possibilities offered by MUVEs : • Altering the characteristics of the virtualized physical environment• Altering the characteristics of avatars• Altering group dynamics

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A work in progress

Thank you for your kind attention !

Julien.nelson@parisdescartes.fr

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