COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY:
RESEARCH AND DESIGN
Mary Lou Maher
Senior Research Scientist, HCILab, University of Maryland
Professor, Design Lab, University of Sydney
Individual
Team
Self Selected Team
Crowd
INDIVIDUAL VS COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY
RESEARCH

Individual creativity:






personal characteristics
role of individual memory, emotion
individual cognitive processes
influence of organizations, environments, tools
how technology can support/enhance creativity
Collective creativity:



role of technology to enable collective creativity
motivation, engagement, process
evaluating creativity
COLLECTED
Designcrowd.com
SOMETHING IN BETWEEN
Quirky.com
Threadless.com
COLLECTIVE
Encyclopedia of Life
Wikipedia
Climate CoLab
MANY people working
independently
Fold.it
openIDEO.com
MANY people
working
together
Top Coder.com
knowledge
is
aggregated
Opening Design.com
knowledge is
formed
collaboratively
STUDIES OF COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY
Protocol analysis of online discussion
 Survey of motivation

Level 1: username
Level 2: sentence
Level 3: one code
INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS OF PROTOCOL
ANALYSIS
High rate of idea generation overcomes
limitations of novice
 Less fixation on design idea, shifts in attention
 Crowd shares traits with ‘expert’ designer
 Managed vs self-organized- overcoming
limitations
 Users as designers – emotional engagement

MOTIVATION IN COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE








Ideology – participation for the purpose of contributing to a larger cause.
Challenge – participation that provides a sense of personal achievement
through acquiring additional knowledge or skill.
Career– participation that may lead to an advance in the individual’s career.
Social – desire to have a shared experience with one or more individuals.
Fun – participation for the purpose of entertainment, enjoyment, excitement,
relief from other experiences, or simply furnishing or structuring the passage
of time.
Reward – participation to receive tangible rewards includes money, points in a
game, a gift or voucher.
Recognition – participation in order to receive private or public
acknowledgement.
Duty – participation in response to a wish or command expressed personally.
SURVEY OF
MOTIVATION TO
PARTICIPATE IN
COLLECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
SUMMARY OF SURVEY RESULTS
Motivatio
n
AMT
Agree
Reward
AMT
Disagree
Wikipedia Wikipedia Other
Agree
Disagree Agree
X
X
Other
Disagree
X
Ideology
X
X
X
Social
X
X
X
Fun
X
X
X
Recogniti
on
X
X
X
Challenge
X
X
X
DESIGNING NEW HCI TO ENHANCE HUMAN
CREATIVITY
Collective Creativity
Individual Creativity
DESIGNING TANGIBLES FOR CREATIVITY*:
RELEVANT RESEARCH
 Cognitive
models of creativity: analogy, mental
leap, structure mapping
 The role of gesture and thought
 The impact of tangible interaction and spatial
movements
Siftables.com
*Maher, Clausner, Druin
11
DO TANGIBLES ENHANCE CREATIVITY?
Hypothesis: Using tangibles produces more
gestures and language consistent with the
underlying spatial structure of analogous
problems.
 Coding the protocol data: Actions, Gestures,
Language

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
Not only do actions in space promote thought,
specific actions interact with specific kinds of
thought. (Kessell and Tversky, Thinking with
Hands and Paper)
 Observations: Positive correlation between
tangible devices and creative cognition
 Design Sessions:

 Design
principles for designing tangible computing
for kids
 Design methodology for designing with children
13
FREE PLAY TO ENGAGE THE PUBLIC TO
CONTRIBUTE TO CREATIVE THINKING ABOUT
CLIMATE CHANGE*
“The best way to change the future is to play with it first.”
Stefanie Olsen, CNET News (http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/)
* Maher and Fisher
FREE PLAY VS COMPETITIVE PLAY
free play engages people to participate in
playful activities that focus on meaning making
and creativity
 competitive play engages people to participate
in playful activities in which winning is the goal

SOCIAL-COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE


Machine Learning to
cluster input data
Rules to map from
ontology to artistic
visualization
EVALUATION OF FREE PLAY INSTALLATION
Quantitative:
measure the
amount of activity
 Qualitative:
characterise the
motivation and
contribution of the
individuals

COLLECTIVE CREATIVITY:
SYNERGY OF PEOPLE AND COMPUTING

Individual: Synergy of interactive technologies,
perception, and cognition

Individual/Collective: Synergy of artificial and
human intelligence

Collective: Synergy of social and computational
systems