Describes why and how cultural diversity can enhance creativity.

1. Crossing HCI for Development in Asia Pacific
Chaos, Culture, Conflict and Creativity: Toward a Maturity Model for HCI4D!
April 19, 2015
John C. Thomas, !Problem Solving International
“IF THERE IS NOT ONE AMONG US WHO CONTAINS SUFFICIENT WISDOM, MANY PEOPLE
TOGETHER MAY FIND A CLEAR PATH.” — Paula Underwood, The Walking People.

2. OUTLINE
Why HCI4D?
Provisional Maturity Model
Examples of Stage 8
Enhancing Creativity
Representations
The “singularity” & fluid representations

3. WHY HCI4D?
CHI ’89 plenary talk by astronaut
Cross-cultural HCI workshops at CHI ’92 and InterCHI ’93
Recommendations to SIGCHI EC to make SIGCHI and CHI more
cross-cultural friendly
Information and deadlines
Sound friendly environments
Development consortium
Use “International English” in talks
“Million Person Interface”1999; IBM World Jam 2001
HCI4D workshops at CHI 2007,8,9,10
Multiple workshops in Asia,Africa, and S.America; 2010+
Interact 2007 Rio; DIS 2008 Capetown; CSCW 2010 Hangzhou;
CHI 2015 Seoul

4. PROVISIONAL MATURITY MODEL
Isolation
Exploration
Exploitation
Exhortation
Exportation
Localization
Globalization
Transmutation

5. PROVISIONAL MATURITY MODEL
Isolation: One culture has no real knowledge or contact with another
Exploration: One culture begins to find out about another.
Exploitation: One culture attempts to exploit, subjugate, enslave another.
Exhortation: One culture tries to convince another to be more like the first.
Exportation: (At least) one culture sees the advantages of trading.As applied to HCI,
this might encompass trying to export PC’s from the US to Africa.
Localization:An exporting culture realizes that unaltered goods and services are
often not appropriate for another culture. E.g., different languages, icons, and, more
deeply, service models are needed in different places.

6. PROVISIONAL MATURITY MODEL
Globalization: In this stage, people from cultures work together, often as part of
a larger organization (e.g., a religion, corporation, transnational government, or
NGO) to jointly identify opportunities and solutions appropriate for multiple
cultures. Often the people who work together are more similar to each other
than they are to others in the original cultures.

7. PROVISIONAL MATURITY MODEL
Transmutation: In this stage, people from
different cultures stay distinctly different. They
draw on their unique talents, skills and
backgrounds, to find and solve problems that
would not be noticed or solved by people of
any one culture.
“IF THERE IS NOT ONE AMONG US WHO CONTAINS SUFFICIENT WISDOM MANY PEOPLE
TOGETHER MAY FIND A CLEAR PATH.” — Paula Underwood, The Walking People

8. ASSUMPTIONS/PREMISES
Different cultures and background provide different default
assumptions and representational schemes.
These differences lead to different ideas when faced with a
problem.
A greater number of ideas is, other things being equal, more likely
to contain good ideas than a smaller number of ideas.
People can evaluate with more than chance probability good vs.
bad ideas.
Additionally, the interplay of different ideas can result in the
production of ideas that no single background or culture is likely to
thus expanding the pool of possibly good ideas even further.
Understanding the range and diversity of languages, customs, and
cultures allows the construction of a meta-cultural framework.This
framework can then allow us to construct new ways of working,
living and thinking that transcend those of any existing culture.

9. DIRECT EVIDENCE
• 26 to 42% more IT patents for mixed gender teams than similar
teams of all men or all women teams (Ashcraft & Breitzman,
2007)
• Companies with reported highest levels of racial diversity had
15 times more
sales revenues than those with lower diversity (Herring,
2009). .
• Companies with higher levels of gender diversity had more
customers than those with lower levels (Thomas, 2004).
• Having multi-cultural experience enhances creativity (Leung,
et. al., 2008). In short, there is significant evidence that shows
a diverse group of contributors leads to better outcomes.

10. INDIRECT EVIDENCE
Binocular disparity (and motion parallax and
binaural hearing) use multiple views to construct
“reality” better than one view.
Sexual reproduction (allows faster propagation of
“new ideas” than asexual reproduction)
Unstructured aid for problem solving (looking at
quasi-random word list helped people generate
more ideas)
Heuristic evaluation study (evaluators asked to
imagine they were different people found more
issues)
Jeopardy ( Watson used a large number of
separate methods and learned the types of
questions each method did better on)

11. UNSTRUCTURED PROBLEM SOLVING AID
In a pilot study, college students were given a series of puzzle
problems to solve. A “structured aid” required them to be
explicit about goals, starting conditions and operations.An
“unstructured aid” was a quasi-random list of unrelated words.
Structured Aid revealed issues to investigators but had no impact
on solution probability.
Unstructured Aid improved chances of solving “insight” problems
and judged creativity of a design problem (design a chair).
In a second study, 30 college students were given a design
problem: Design a restaurant from an abandoned church.
Designs were rated on originality (based on feature distance
from all designs) and practicality (based on number of features an
expert said were required).
Half spent 1.5 hours designing. Half had time broken up with 15
minutes of looking at quasi-random word list. Latter group had
significantly higher practicality scores.

12. PAVE (PROGRAMMED AMPLIFICATION OF
VALUABLE EXPERTS)
Three in each of three groups: Human Factors Experts, Developers,
and Non-Experts
Three conditions: Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough, PAVE
Given flow chart of proposed voice service.
Asked to identify potential problems and suggest additional features.
PAVE perspectives: Self, Human Factors Expert, Cognitive
Psychologist, Behaviorist, Social Psychologist,Anthropologists,
Freudian Analyst, Health Advocate,Worried Mother, Spoiled Child.
Spent 2-3 hours on the problem.
HF Experts: Heuristic Evaluation>PAVE>>Cognitive Walkthrough.
Developers and non-experts: PAVE >> Heuristic
Evaluation=Cognitive Walkthrough

13. PATTERN:WHO SPEAKS FOR WOLF?
• Abstract:
• A lot of effort and thought goes into decision making and design.
Nonetheless, it is often the case that bad decisions are made and
bad designs conceived and implemented primarily because some
critical and relevant perspective has not been brought to bear. This
is especially often true if the relevant perspective is that of a
stakeholder in the outcome. Make sure that every relevant
stakeholder’s perspective is brought to bear early.
!
• The idea for this pattern comes from a Native American story
transcribed by Paula Underwood.
!
• Underwood, Paula. Who speaks for Wolf: A Native American
Learning Story. Georgetown TX (now Bayfield, CO): A Tribe of
Two Press, 1983.

14. REPRESENTATION & HUMAN LIMITATION
Here is a still from a video of a
bulldog trying to get a bone
through the doggie door.
Thesis: Our representations are
much like the way the dog initially
tries to get through the door. We
operate out of habit.
Sometimes our way of using
representations is not conducive
to solving a problem.

15. EXAMPLE:THE BIRTHDAY SHARING
435 People in the US House of
Representatives
What is the probability that at
least two share a birthday?

16. PROBLEM: MAPPINGTO “THE BIRTHDAY PROBLEM"
People educated in mathematics
or statistics often run across “the
birthday problem” which basically
shows the counter-intuitive result
that even with only 30 people in a
room, there is about an even
chance that two will share a
birthday. People then conclude
that with 435 people, the
probability must be much higher;
e.g., .99

17. A GENERAL PROBLEM
It takes human beings a long time to learn
a complex system of representation; e.g.,
a natural language or a programming
language or a mathematical symbol
system.
Therefore, we use the same symbol
system for many problems in a domain —
even if the system is not ideal for some.
We use the same symbol system for
multiple stages of the problem — even if
the ideal symbol system would be
different for every step of the problem.

18. VARIETIES OF HUMAN LEARNING
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Symbol-mediated Learning
Socially Facilitated Learning
Learning from Internal ConflictingViews
(“cross-cultural” in the head)

19. IMAGINE:
Another way to work that involved experts
from different cultures using different
representations for each stage of each
problem.
A system might be devised to select a subset
of people for each stage of a problem.
A system might be devised to translate
among steps/perspectives.
Empathy and story can get us part-way
there.
A system might be devised to synthesize
incompatible results.

20. TOOL: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Take a problem.
Now imagine what each of the
following people would say/do/
think:
Einstein, Gandhi, Shakespeare,
Mozart, Dali, Darwin, Freud, B.F.
Skinner,Asimov, Batman,
Hermione….
The story of not
eating sugar.
What do you
think of western
civilization? “I
think that would
be a good idea.”
Be the change.

21. USINGVARIETIES OF ACTUALTO DEVELOP
NOVEL REPRESENTATIONS
Date Notations:
April 19, 2015 (American)
19 April, 2015 (European)
2015,April, 19 (Chinese)
Change Order; Change Spatial Relations; Change specificity;
Adjectives and Nouns
“The red house.”
“La Maison rouge”
Simultaneous; put noun way before adjective; put noun way after adjective;“house”; kinetic typography

22. BASES FOR COUNTING
Number System A based on ten
Number System B based on sixty
!
Allows us, not only to use one or the other, but
also to invent system C based on two, system D based on 16
!
Multiply by 25:
In base ten, multiply by one hundred by shifting twice left
In base two, divide twice by shifting twice right.
Or, in base 25 shift once left … but this requires memorizing
large table.

23. PEOPLE DIFFER IN ABILITY/INTEREST/KNOWLEDGE

24. ALIGNMENT:ALL MUST GO IN ONE DIRECTION
Fine for this
person
OK for
this person
Really a waste for
these three

25. EMPOWERMENT:ALL AWARE OF DIRECTION &
ENCOURAGEDTO MAKE GREATEST CONTRIBUTION
Resultant in desired
direction greater
than if everyone
“must” go in exactly
the same direction.

26. POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES
Not just: More productive,
effective, efficient problem solving
Also: Finding and Formulating
problems we do not see
And solving the insoluble:
Global Climate Change
Unbridled Greed…

27. REFERENCES
!
Ashcraftand, C. & Breitzman, A. (2007) Who invents IT? An Analysis of Women’s Participation in Information Technology Patenting. Technical report, NCWIT, March 2007.
Best, M., Deardon, A., Dray, S., Light, A., Thomas, J.C., Buckhalter, C., Greenblatt, D., Krishnan, S., Sambasivan, N. (2007). Sharing perspectives on community centered design and international
development. Human-Computer Interaction, INTERACT 2007. New York: Springer.
Ceriejo-Roibas, A.,Dearden, A., Dray, S., Gray, P., Thomas, J.and Winters, N. (2009), Ethics, roles, and relationships in interaction design in developing regions, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
Interact 2009. 5727, 963-964, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03658-3_132.
Dearden, A., Dray, S., Light, A., & Thomas, J.C. (2007). Participatory design for international development, Workshop for CHI 2007, San Jose, CA, May 2007.
Desurvire, H. & Thomas, J.C. (1993). Enhancing performance of interface evaluators using non-empirical usability methods. In Proceedings of the Human Factors 37th Annual Meeting, 2,
1132-1136. Seattle, WA: October 11-15. Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
!
Herring, C.. (2009) Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender and the Business Case for Diversity. American Sociological Review, 74(2):208–224, 2009.
Kellogg, W. and Thomas, J. (1993) Cross-cultural perspectives on human-computer interaction: a report on the CHI'92 workshop, SIGCHI Bulletin, 25 (2), 40-45.
Leung, A.K.,Maddux, Galinsky, A.D.& Chiu, C-Y. (2008) Multicultural Experience Enhances Creativity: The When and How. American Psychologist, 63(3):169–181, 2008.
Sambasivan, N., Ho, M., Kam, M., Kodagoda, N., Dray, S., Thomas, J. C., Light, A., and Toyama, K. 2009. Human-centered computing in international development. In Proceedings of the 27th
international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, MA, USA, April 04 - 09, 2009). CHI '09. ACM, New York, NY, 4745-4750. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/
10.1145/1520340.1520731
Schuler, D. (2008). Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Social Change. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.
Thomas, J. (2012) Understanding and Harnessing Conflict. CHI Workshop Position Paper for HCI for Peace: Preventing, De-escalating and Recovering from Conflict. CHI 2012, Austin, Texas.
Thomas, J. (2012), Enhancing Collective Intelligence by Enhancing Social Roles and Diversity. CSCW Workshop Position Paper for Collective Intelligence and Community Discourse and Action.
CSCW 2012, Bellvue, WA.
Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Systems in China and the World. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Designing social and
collaborative systems for China. Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.
Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Media and International Development. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Social media for
development, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.
Thomas, J.C. (2008). Using Story Templates as a Method to Cumulate Knowledge in HCI and International Development. Workshop paper for CSCW 2008.
Thomas, J.C. (2007). Panelist, Meta-design and social creativity: Making all voices heard. INTERACT 2007, Rio de Janeiro, BZ, Nov., 2007.
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!

28. REFERENCES (CONT).
!
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Thomas, J. C. (2003). Toward a socio-technical pattern language. Invited keynote presentation at the 10th ISPE international conference on concurrent engineering: Research and practice.
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