The in this thesis presented approach for enhancing the creative process and the result- ing creativity differs from the current approaches. The current approaches for creativity support tools were presented in Chapter 2. The weaknesses of those approaches were explained in detail. This section will not introduce one feature, like a graphical stimulus, like the approaches described in Chapter 2. Instead, this section will explain the role of the analysis, knowledge and the application of both for a support of the human creativity. Through this, a universal framework without the limitations of previous approaches will be provided.
The support of creativity is rather a matter of delicacy. It is very much influenced by the knowledge of the creator about his own creative process and his creative behaviours. The knowledge is gained through the exchange with other creators, but also through the analysis performed on his own. The decision about the usefulness of certain information about the creative behaviour is made by the creator and/or the members of the domain. A domain and user driven creativity support is more suitable for catering the requirements of the tasks in that domain. Through this, limitations regarding the possible methods for enhancing creativity are avoided.
A tool-set for the support of creativity must be able to guide the user into directions which enhance the creativity. On the other hand, the tool must not under any circumstances bother the user in his creative process. This would only result into a rejection of the tool- set. However, a creativity support tool is only the one side of supporting the creativity. The creator will gain a lot of knowledge about his creativity through the analysis of his creative process. The in this chapter introduced analysis processes provide the creator with detailed information about the creative process.
The advantage of the presented approach is the focus on the creative process, instead of only analysing the results of the creation process itself. The support is aiming on an improvement of the creative behaviour and not a direct influence on the artefact. The improvement of the creativity and therefore the resulting artefact is of indirect nature. The here presented approach is designed to facilitate a growing of the knowledge database. Existing creativity support tools focus on a specific approach for a stimulus of the creator or even the creation of creative artefact. This often limits the field of application to a small domain. The DMCA caters for the collection of knowledge about the creative process from all of its users. Each contribution of a user will increase the knowledge about the creative process and creativity in general.
Creativity Support is also provided through the monitoring of current creative processes. The monitoring process is designed to initiate external stimuli for exploration and curiosity. For example, if it is known that reading a book or having a discussion has a positive effect when the creator is struggling with his work.
The monitoring is especially favourable for teaching purposes in schools. The students will receive an immediate feedback after a certain behaviour was detected. This behaviour would most likely indicate that the student is making a mistake. The problem of a too strict teaching philosophy through a general, but unsuitable behavioural pattern is not given. Each creator, or student in this case, has a set of personal behavioural patterns, which overrule other behavioural patterns, provided by the domain.
The difference between the DMCA and other projects is the fact that the here presented approach is not only focussing on providing a certain stimulus, but instead providing stimuli, guidance, exploration and understanding of the creative process and behaviour of creators. Only an open approach, like this, is capable of satisfying the needs of a creative mind.
Measuring the effectiveness of a creativity support tool is very difficult. There is no general taxonomy for the evaluation of creativity. The identification of such a taxonomy would mean to have a general definition of creativity itself. This is of course not possible.
Nonetheless, the here presented approach enables to analyse the creative process of a creator over a long time period. The analysis of the creativity maps will show whether previous identified poor creative behaviour continued to re-appear after technologies like the monitoring process were used to overcome the problem. Hence, it is possible to analyse the influence and therefore the impact of certain approaches for improving the creativity through the effects those approaches had on the creative process. Changes in the creativity map itself will show if the creativity has improved.
6.10
Summary
This chapter provides a detailed introduction into the analysis of creative processes. A broad range of possible analysis types and approaches were discussed. It was explained that the combination of a pattern description language, the concept of behavioural patterns as well as a knowledge management facility enable a powerful and flexible analysis of the creative process.
The strength of this approach is the internal structure of the creativity maps. Every creativity map is based on the same foundation. This allows the comparison of creativity maps and as a result the comparison of the creative processes of two or more creators. It was explained why collaboration and hopping plays an important role. Current Creativity Support Tools are not able to cover the aspects of hopping at all. Hence, the approaches do not allow to study a very important phenomenon: Creativity often occurs on the boundaries between domains (see Chapter 2).
The structure of the creativity map enables not only the analysis of the creative process, but also to study its influences on the artefact, which is stored inside the states. It is possible to either include the states into the analysis process by using partial creativity maps or by manually examine a selected version of the artefact.
The reader has learned that presented approach enables more than one analysis type, namely the detailed analysis, the monitoring process and the analysis of frequent be- haviours. It was explained that the detailed analysis is used to gain new knowledge about the creative behaviour of a creator. The evaluation of this knowledge is leading to the definition of new behavioural patterns, e.g. describing wanted or unwanted creative be- haviour. It therefore provides an indirect creativity support.
The monitoring process uses behavioural patterns in order to monitor the current working process of a creator. Through this, it is possible to identify poor creative behaviour or, in opposite, wanted behaviours at the moment of the occurrence. This type of analysis enables a direct support of the creative process. It was explained that the processes for the analysis and support of the creative process or creativity are mostly overlapping.
A very interesting feature for mapping human creativity is the possibility to produce creativity maps a posteriori. This is possible in case the creator has left behind information about the creation process in form of notes or voice recordings and so on. So far, the creation process, undertaken in the past, could only be examined by hand. A creativity map, based on such information allows studying the creative process with the aid of computer. Of course, it also enables a precise comparison of the creator’s creative process with those of others.
The presented analysis approaches reach far beyond current techniques. Moreover, there is no timely limitation for the analysis. Everything can be repeated at a later time as all information and knowledge is either stored in the creativity maps or the knowledge repository. The analysis is not limited to a specific type. Behavioural patterns provide full flexibility for the description of constructs inside the creativity map.
Tool Support
Objectives
Presentation of an assistive collaborative framework.
Introduction of the technique for tracking revert operations. Techniques used for the realisation of the BPDL parser. Description of the monitoring process.
Presentation of a creative working environment and its main tools.
“We’re entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.”
7.1
Introduction
A creative person requires a set of powerful tools and a creative environment for his work. The type of these tools depends on the requirements of the creator. These requirements are very important and need to be taken into account when developing software which caters for the creativity of people. Computer programs are often developed for a very specific task. A program to support the creativity of creators from many disciplines must not share this limitation. Furthermore, it requires a pluggable design for the ability to add and remove tools, depending on the needs of the user.
The De Montfort Creativity Assistant (DMCA) is a tool set, providing facilities to work on a creative artefact and to capture and analyse the creative behaviour of a person during his work. It enables people to work collaboratively on a project. The tool set is based on a client-server architecture. It contains two major client-side applications:
De Montfort Creative Environment (DMCE) De Montfort Creativity Mapper (DMCM)
One of the main tasks of the server-side is the retrieval and preparation of information for the analysis of the creative process. Therefore, this chapter will provide detailed information about the techniques, which are used for the management and processing of knowledge and information. The presented framework demonstrates the applicability of the approaches, introduced in the previous chapters.
This chapter is divided into three major parts. The first part will describe the role of the DMCA and provides an overview about its components. The second part introduces the tracking of the revert operations, which is required for the analysis. This is followed by an introduction of the techniques for the extraction of information from creativity maps. It describes how the expression of a behavioural pattern is for the application on a creativity map. Furthermore, the monitoring process is explained in detail. The third part provides an overview about the tools of the DMCE and the DMCM. A knowledge management and analysis tool, as part of the DMCM, provides a GUI for the in this thesis introduced approaches and techniques.
The DMCM has a modular design, which allows using it as a standalone application. Nonetheless, the aim is a seamless integration into the DMCA.
The DMCA as well as the DMCE and DMCM have been developed in collaboration by Sascha Westendorf and the author of this thesis, as part of the studies on the Creative Tech- nologies Research Programme at the Software Technology Research Laboratory (STRL), De Montfort University. Hence the author wants to acknowledge the contributions of Sascha Westendorf for co-developing the technologies, described in Section 7.2, 7.6 and 7.7 [22, 131].