6.2 Analysis Process
6.2.2 Monitoring of the Creative Process
Creativity maps are updated in real-time. States and transitions are added to the map at the moment of their occurrence. Hence, it is possible to analyse the current creative
behaviour of a creator. This allows a constant monitoring of the creative process. The aim of this approach is the identification of a certain creative behaviour. The analysis process is running parallel to the creator’s working process. It is not interfering with the working process itself and invisible for the creator most of the time.
The monitoring approach is limited in regard to the detailed analysis. A lot types of analysis are not applicable, because these are not of interest for a constant monitoring. For example, the creator would not benefit from a constant identification of all revert activities. The result of the analysis would always contain the same entries, with a minor change from time to time.
Instead, the monitoring process is based on the knowledge about the creative behaviour, which was gained through the detailed analysis process. This has an impact on the nature of the behavioural patterns. The behavioural patterns can be divided into two logical sub-categories:
Explorative Patterns Supportive Patterns
Behavioural patterns of the first category are used to gain new knowledge about the creative process. The aim of applying these behavioural patterns is the collection of in- formation in order to provide an holistic view about the creative performance of a person. It is obvious that most of the behavioural patterns for the detailed analysis belong to this category.
The second category describes those behavioural patterns, which are used for the moni- toring process. The task of this process is mostly of supportive nature. The identification of a behavioural pattern, representing poor creative behaviour will not generate a lot new knowledge. The main task of these patterns is the guidance of the user, e.g. to warn him about poor creative behaviour.
The classification of the behavioural patterns into one of these categories is not strict. The usage of a behavioural pattern can change and the categorisation is therefore matter of the creator himself.
The most important task of the monitoring process is obviously the search for poor creative behaviour. Poor creative behaviour can for example lead to poor results at the artefact or might indicate a distracting activity. A creator might know that the creative behaviour in form of the sequence
S :=
−→
reading; −→
contemplating; −→
writinghas a bad influence on his or her creativity and results in poor contributions on the artefact. The monitoring process is able to search for this sequence with the possibility to inform the creator in case of detecting it.
Another poor behaviour of the creator might be a too long sequence of transitions between two creational activities.
S :=
−→
writing; · · · ; −→
writing|
{z
}
length > 10
The behavioural pattern for the sequence above would contain the LEN()() operator to search for such a sequence with a length longer than ten.
The two examples illustrate that the monitoring process mainly aims on the detection of a certain creative behaviour. Nonetheless, it is still very flexible within this process. The creator itself is able to choose from his set of behavioural patterns. This allows an adjustment of the monitoring process to the current needs of the creator.
The monitoring process reads the transitions one by one and stores them in a cache if the transitions fits the pattern. It starts with the first transition of the behavioural pattern. In case it is found, it checks if the next transition is also the next transition of the behavioural pattern. This is repeated until the pattern is complete or, more likely, the process is aborted as the latest transition does not fit the condition.
A creator might define following behavioural pattern which describes poor creative be- haviour:
Sb:=
−→
discussing; −→
contemplating; −→
discussing; −→
prototypingThe current monitored range of transitions contains following activities:
Sr:=
−→
reading; −→
writing; −→
discussing; −→
contemplating;
−→
discussingOne can see that most of the transitions of the behavioural pattern are found within the current range. However, the last required transition did not appear yet, or will probably
not appear next. It is important to note that only a complete match of the behavioural pattern will trigger an action. An approach to include similar behaviours would lead to many false positives, especially with small behavioural patterns. The strict handling is due the fact that the arrangement of the transitions in a sequence is crucial for the analysis.
The monitoring process often searches for several behavioural patterns at the same time. Each behavioural pattern has its own analysis range and cache. The aim of the monitoring is mostly the prevention of poor creative behaviour. There is no reason to tell somebody that the current approach is a good one. However, there is the possibility to inform a creator that he had already a good idea, but then went wrong somewhere. In this case, the creator might welcome a hint.
Analysis Range
The monitoring process only makes sense for a certain range of transitions. This range is usually a small number of the last added transitions. For example, the process would only analyse the last ten working steps of the creator. An analysis of whole creativity is unnecessary, because the current work will not affect older parts of the creativity map. This benefits to a faster and less complex analysis process.
Range of the Monitoring Process
Figure 6.2: Monitoring of Current Behaviour
The Figure 6.2 depicts a range for the monitoring process within a creativity map. The range is not always covering the sequence from the initial state of the creativity map to the most recent state. The range often contains only transitions for a sub-sequence of the
before mentioned sequence. This emerges due to the knowledge of previous appearances of the same behavioural pattern.
The range changes with every new transition. This requires a sophisticated processing of the activities as one new transition might lead to an identification of a behavioural pattern. The monitoring process uses a cache in order to enable a quick analysis of the range with every new transition. The range itself is not a static number of transitions, but the maximal amount of transitions for the behavioural pattern.