Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Kumiyo Nakakoji
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Tokyo
www.kid.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Knowledge Interaction Design for Creative Knowledge Work

Abstract

More and more people use application systems to design and produce knowledge artifacts. The goal of our research is to develop a theoretical framework for the design and development of application systems for creative knowledge work, such as early stages of writing, data analysis, or molecular design. A computational tool provides materials with which a user interacts to create a situation that talks back to the user. The interaction design of a tool, namely, what representations a user can generate and how the user can manipulate them with the tool, influences a user's cognitive processes. The tool's interaction design either guides or distracts, encourages or discourages, promotes or prohibits a user in/from taking a certain course of action or state of mind, thus fostering or obstructing creativity. Our approach toward the interaction design of a tool for fostering creativity is to understand the nature of creative knowledge work, and to identify interaction design principles through prototyping various application systems and fragments.

In this talk, I will first discuss issues in support of creative knowledge work based on theories in design and in human-computer interaction. Then, I will describe three interaction design principles we have identified:  (1) interpretation-rich representations, (2) representations with constant grounding, and (3) interaction methods for hands-on generation and manipulation of the representations. The principles will be illustrated with tools we have developed over the last several years. The talk concludes with implications for research in user interface, CSCW, and software engineering.

Bio:::

Kumiyo Nakakoji is a Full Professor of Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Tokyo, Japan, since 2002. Her research interests include the knowledge interaction design framework for the development of interactive systems for creative knowledge work, and for supporting collective creativity.

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