After an historical review of evaluation methods, we describe an emerging research method called Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case studies (MILCs) which seems well adapted to study the creative activities that users of information visualization systems engage in. We propose that the efficacy of tools can be assessed by documenting 1) usage (observations, interviews, surveys, logging etc.) and 2) expert users ’ success in achieving their professional goals. We summarize lessons from related ethnography methods used in HCI and provide guidelines for conducting MILCs for information visualization. We suggest ways to refine the methods for MILCs in modest sized projects and then envision ambitious projects with 3-10 researchers working over 1-3 years to understand individual and organizational use of information visualization by domain experts working at the frontiers of knowledge in their fields. 1.

Creativity research is a large and varied field in which the subject is characterised on many different levels. The arrival of digital media and computational tools has opened up new possibilities for creative practice. The cutting edge in the digital arts is a highly fertile ground for the investigation of creativity and the role of new technologies. The demands of such work often reveal the limitations of existing technologies and open the door to developing new approaches and techniques. This provides the creativity researcher with opportunities to understand the multi-dimensional characteristics of the creative process. At the same time, it places new demands upon the creators of the technological solutions and pushes forward our understanding of the future requirements of creative technologies. This paper is concerned with the nature of creativity and the design of creativity enhancing computer systems. The research has multi-disciplinary foundations in Human-Computer Interaction and creative practice in Art, Design, Science and Engineering. As a result of a series of studies of creative people and the associated developments in technology, a strategy for practice-based research has evolved in which research and practice are interdependent activities that have mutual benefits as well as distinctive outcomes. This paper charts the development of that co-evolutionary process from the foundation studies to recent outcomes of a major project in art and technology collaboration. The notion of the Studio as a laboratory in the field is introduced and a new methodology for systematic practice-based research is presented. From the results of the investigations that took place, opportunities for the development of technology environments for creative collaboration are propo...

This research investigates thinking processes of duos of jazz improvisers in performance. Of particular interest are cognitive processes related to creativity and to reasoning about time, since both activities are fundamental to improvisation. Data sources are the group members' retrospective verbal protocols, collected after the performance of each tune. One result of this work is that cognition related to reasoning about time and creativity varied little either within or across groups, regardless of the type of tune being played. This result is further investigated by examining some of the statements from the protocols themselves.

Cognitive approaches to creativity are discussed as they relate to an important task of entrepreneurs: generating novel and useful ideas for business ventures. Attention is given to the paradoxical role of knowledge, which can either enhance of inhibit creativity, as well as to the properties of knowledge and a selected set of processes that influence the originality of newly generated ideas. Experimental findings are discussed along with suggestions about how those findings might be translated to practical applications.

Abstract. The second part of this survey examines biocomputing in intact multicellular organisms. The parallelism between creative problem solving and evolution is emphasized: both processes invoke heuristic searching and feature modularity prominently. Simonton’s chance-configuration theory of creative problem solving is recast in terms of pattern recognition and analyzed in terms of parallel and sequential processing. An attempt is made to demystify the creative process that is commonly thought to be the monopoly of geniuses. It is shown that the procedures utilized in high creativity and in everyday ingenuity are fundamentally the same, but geniuses push the creative process to the extreme. A re-interpretation of Freud’s concept of the unconscious in terms of selective attention is invoked to dispel the mystery surrounding the introspective account of Henri Poincaré on mathematical creation. Among the many attributes of consciousness, the elusive free will problem is singled out for analysis in terms of biological control laws. While free will is a philosophical problem, the conflict of free will and determinism can be treated as

The research programme which underlies this paper focuses on understanding the process of addressing “creative ” or illstructured problems – an economically significant process and one which pervades the professional lives of teams of professionals such as software engineers, managers and strategic planners. This class of problem is poorly understood and, consequently, there is little effective support (leverage without constraint on flexibility/creativity) currently available. In this paper, we present a preliminary study of creative teams in action – a study in which we have access to both data describing the dynamics of “evolution ” of the focal artefact and data describing the process undertaken by the team. 1.

The term innovation resonates broadly in the cyberspace, books, and journals. A careful analysis of the literature indicates that the knowledge of the underlying science of innovation is limited. Innovation in any domain can be enhanced by principles and insights from different disciplines. However, the process of identifying the linkages between the diverse disciplines and the target domain is not well understood. The innovation process and conditions triggering innovation set the stage for economic progress. The ideas outlined in the paper provide a roadmap for future discovery of innovation science. 1.

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Mathematical creativity ensures the growth of mathematics as a whole. However, the source of this growth, the creativity of the mathematician, is a relatively unexplored area in mathematics and mathematics education. In order to investigate how mathematicians create mathematics, a qualitative study involving five creative mathematicians was conducted. The mathematicians in this study verbally reflected on the thought processes involved in creating mathematics. Analytic induction was used to analyze the qualitative data in the interview transcripts and to verify the theory driven hypotheses. The results indicate that, in general, the mathematicians’ creative processes followed the four-stage Gestalt model of preparation-incubation-illumination-verification. It was found that social interaction, imagery, heuristics, intuition, and proof were the common characteristics of mathematical creativity. Additionally, contemporary models of creativity from psychology were reviewed and used to interpret the characteristics of mathematical creativity Mathematical creativity ensures the growth of the field of mathematics as a whole. The constant increase in the number of journals devoted to mathematics research bears evidence to the growth of mathematics. Yet what lies at the essence of this growth, the creativity of the mathematician, has not been the subject of much research. It is usually the case that most mathematicians are uninterested in analyzing the thought processes that result in mathematical creation (Ervynck, 1991). The earliest known attempt to study mathematical creativity was an extensive questionnaire published in the French periodical L'Enseigement Mathematique (1902). This questionnaire and a lecture on creativity given by the renowned 20th century mathematician Henri Poincaré to the Societé de Psychologie inspired his colleague Jacques Hadamard, another prominent 20th century mathematician, to investigate the psychology of mathematical creativity

We address the question of how processes from evolutionary biological ecosystems can be abstracted and beneficially applied in creative domains. Evolution is a process capable of generating appropriate (fit) novelty in biological systems, so it is interesting to ask if it can do so in other, nonbiological systems. Past approaches have focused on optimisation via fitness evaluation (either machine representable or human evaluated), but this is ill-suited to creative systems, as creativity is not necessarily an optimisation process. Our approach is to consider the creative system as a virtual evolutionary ecosystem, specifically adopting the process of niche construction. We show how the abstracted niche construction process can be applied to an agent-based line drawing system, enhancing the diversity and heterogeneity of drawings produced over a version without niche construction.