Sara Jones gave a presentation on her research into creativity at City University London. Her research includes a 5-year fellowship on creativity and interactive systems, a project on information spaces for creative conversations, and establishing the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice. She discussed experiments using interactive surfaces like Microsoft Surface and a custom-built Mezatop for creative tasks. Her current work involves "creativity pods" that combine physical and digital resources to support creative work.
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Sara Jones - Information Spaces for Creative Conversations
1. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Information Spaces for Creative Conversations
Innovation, Creativity and Leadership – Research and Practice
June 13th, 2011
Sara Jones
Centre for HCI Design and
Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
City University London
saraj@soi.city.ac.uk
http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/people/Sarajones.html
@svjaok
2. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity research at City
3. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity research at City (contd)
2006 5 year RCUK research fellowship:
Creativity and the development of interactive systems
2008 2 year JISC-funded project:
Information Spaces for Creative Conversations
2009 Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
2010 Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership
4. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity workshops
• Creative conversations in a physical space
5. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Experiments with interactive surfaces (1)
• Design task (sketching the user
interface for a mobile
calendar/clock application)
• 2 – 3 team members working
together on a multitouch table,
and 1 in a remote location using
a tablet PC
• Team connected using Adobe
Connect and Skype
6. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Experiments with interactive surfaces (2)
• Digital post-it notes on a Microsoft
Surface
• Experimented with brainstorming
and design tasks
7. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Experiments with interactive surfaces (3)
• Mezatop: purpose-built
interactive surface is
supporting a wider
range of studies
• Interesting application:
uploading ideas from
iPhone/iPad app to the
Mezatop
8. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity pods
9. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity pods
• Still possible to do all the same
physical things
• Most ‘creative work’ still done
using physical resources
10. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity pods
• Also possible to access digital
resources in the shared space, for
example:
• Project brief
• Audience research
• Previous work – own and others
• Sources of inspiration
11. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity pods
• Also possible to create digital
resources in the shared space, for
example
• Project planning
• Requirements
• Mood boards
12. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Creativity pods
• Also possible to translate
information from the physical to
the digital, for example to
• Record results of brainstorming
• Capture models for later use
• Share storyboards with those not
present
• Currently exploring different ways
of doing this
• Photographs
• Videos
• Digital pens
13. Centre for HCI Design
Centre for Creativity
Please get in touch!
Sara Jones
Centre for HCI Design and
Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
City University London
saraj@soi.city.ac.uk
http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/people/Sarajones.html
@svjaok
Online discussion at:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/UK-Business-Innovation-Discussion-
Group-2862814
Notas do Editor
Meaning of ‘info spaces’ will become clear during the course of the talk.Creative conversations – no very precise definition at the moment, but characterised byFlexibility (Guilford 1957) i.e. lots of different ideasFluidity or flow (Guildofrd, then Cszikzensmihalyi) i.e. positive state with continuous feedback on developing ideasRecently came across research by David Brookes saying that groups that take most turns are most successfulHelena’s been trying to measure and compare groups working under different conditions in terms of how creative their conversatiuonsaer, but that’s another story ….
Been running creativity workshops in physical info spaces for over a decade.People very comfortable with this and able to be very productive – have some creative conversations.But there are problems with this:- How to save information for later reuse- How to make it accessible to others who weren’t thereafterwards orat the same time!How to make it available for further developmentSo we have started experimenting with adding digital components into the information spaces we use.
Experiments with incorporating digital elements into the information spaceVideo quality acceptableAudio more of a problem‘The audio quality I just couldn’t hear….. When you concentrate on talking to me that’s fine, but when you chat I didn’t know what’s going on’‘I could hear some noises in the background. I wasn’t sure if they were discussing between themselves or if it was a noise.’Communication not perfectAble to get attention when needed, able to interrupt, able to express own ideas, but harder to understand othersSketching on the whiteboard more of a problemDifficulty creating and manipulating objects on the screen, due to problems with both surface and softwareSome lack of awareness of activities of others – especially for remote participantsSO, the creative conversation is impeded rather than enhanced – costs outweight benefits.
Another possible digital ‘support’ tool – digital element in information spaceReplicating functionality of paper post-its, with additional benefit of being able to save.But: Loss of fluidity due to finger writing and lack of space outweighs benefits of being able to save post-its.Lesson: tend towards augmenting rather than replicating what physical artefects can do.Interesting findings: pairs work better than groups (due to space), andPairs are more productive when they have private space first, then work together
Another digital support tool – element in information spaceFocus on use of post-its in group/grid brainstorming (where all have private time first, then facilitator asks for ideas for shared space)Replicating functionality of paper post-its, with additional benefit of being able to save, and already being in textual format, so no need for handwriting recognition etcWrite ideas using typing not finger writingHave private time before sharingAdditional benefit: can upload from remote locations, and at different times (eg following main session to segue into open innovation functionality)To be evaluatued!
We’ve been using these in teaching creative design of interactive systems for 3 years – still not sure what to call them!Allow us to experiment further with digitally augmenting a physical space to better support creativity and design.Improvements each year - This is year 2
To enable access by the group and anyone who wasn’t there at a later datePhotos easyVideos still a bit hard work for anything other than highlight momentsPens provide exciting opportunities: whiteboard pen gives familiarity of physical drawing digital pen provides good, realtime digital copy of what’s drawn, hence possibility of sharing with colleagues elsewhereStill need to investigate the effects of this on creative conversation - noticing that seemingly minor and subtle details can break the flow of creative conversation, so how will people deal with interrupts to take photos, evaluation apprehension if video, slight delays with use of pen??Also to investigate:- Uploading info to online part of the digital space from remote locations and at different times, and continuing conversation asynchronously eg through open innovation platforms