The challenge of supporting creative work is pushing user interface designers and human-computer interaction researchers to develop improved models of creative processes. This talk begins with a comparison of creativity models and focuses on Czikszentmihalyi's domain, field, and individual, as a basis for software requirements. These requirements lead to eight creative activities that could be facilitated by improved interfaces:
These activities can be supported in existing software applications, built
into web services, or inspire novel tools. However, rapid performance, minimal
interface distraction, and scalable solutions are necessary for success. Smoother
coordination across multiple windows and better integration of tools is vital.
A second facilitating goal is compatible actions with consistent terminology,
such as the widely used cut-copy-paste or open-save-close. Higher
levels of actions that are closer to the task domain are candidates, such as
annotate-consult-revise, initiate-compose-evaluate, or collect-explore-visualize.
Adding to the challenge of doing research in this area is the difficulty of
doing evaluation. Benchmark tasks can hardly reveal the efficacy for creative
work and discovery. While case studies or ethnographic observations are useful
as formative design studies, they are weak in their capacity to provide rigorous
validation.
BEN SHNEIDERMAN (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/) , and Member of the Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies & for Systems Research, all at the University of Maryland at College Park. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing (ACM) in 1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001.
Ben is the author of "Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems" (1980) and "Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction" (3rd ed. 1998) http://www.awl.com/DTUI/. He pioneered the highlighted textual link in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web. With S. Card and J. Mackinlay, he co-authored "Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think" (1999). His new book "Leonardo's Laptop" appeared in October 2002 (MIT Press) (http://mitpress.mit.edu/leonardoslaptop).