Web-Based support for creative collaboration

This paper considers web-based systems in support of distributed communities involving creative work. It is concerned with the sharing of knowledge that might otherwise remain unspoken, or tacit, amongst those engaged in design tasks. Drawing on the results of the evaluation of a prototype system, pointers for future systems are presented

A new approach to collaborative creativity support of new product designers

Bitter-Rijpkema, M., Sloep, P. B., Sie, R., Van Rosmalen, P., Retalis, S., & Katsamani, M. (2011). A new approach to collaborative creativity support of new product designers. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 7(4), 478-492. DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2011.042992Effective collaborative creativity is crucial to contemporary professionals who have to continuously produce innovative products and services. The technological nature and complexity of the innovations require team work, among specialists from different disciplines. Often these teams work in a distributed fashion, across boundaries of time and place. Therefore they need electronic “spaces” that support (‘afford’) their creative collaboration. Co-creativity support is not only a matter of making appropriate groupware spaces available but also of providing concurrent support in all these dimensions. These considerations inspired the development of the idSpace platform. idSpace is a collaboration platform integrating a variety of creativity tools with pedagogy-based guidance. It aims to optimize both the use of creativity techniques themselves and of the supporting processes of team collaboration and knowledge creation. In this paper we zoom in on Knowledge-sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity (KS4CC). We show how collaborative creativity can be enhanced via integration of pattern-based pedagogical flow support, including suggestions of optimal use of creativity techniques. The KS4CC strategies consist of a merger of learning and collaboration flow patterns with support for the application of creative techniques

LiveMache: Supporting Collaborative Design Ideation, Curation, Learning and Evaluation in Creative Contexts

This project investigates how we can computationally support phases of the design process in solving creative problems, as well as the methods that arise in its educational context. Prior work addresses foundational topics, such as free-form web curation and creativity, which are necessary to ground the motivations in designing a system to provide this kind of context. Combining this background understanding and ongoing discussions with design instructors clarifies what a tool must include to viably support individuals involved in creative processes. What arises is a need for a system that implements real-time collaboration, as design projects are often collaborative, whose space and functionality does not limit a designer’s creativity. Our solution is LiveMache, a web application that provides live, collaborative capabilities for collecting and organizing content, along with writing sketching, chat, and live streaming video. Although the user interface design is just as important in creating this application, my research particularly focuses on how to make the user experience as expected, which depends on the database, the client/server architecture, and role-based access control. This paper addresses the reasoning behind the design of these three components for LiveMache, and discusses how their functions serve to make LiveMache successful as a creativity tool

Institutional embrace and the postmodern professional

The post-modern teacher is one that has been fashioned over the last 20 year. S/he belongs to a 'greedy institution' in which teachers embrace its values and reproduce them as well as adding value by contributing to a continuous reinvention of it. Their professional identity is now one that is isomorphic with the school, one in which status and professional expertise are bound up with the image of the institution in the glo-na-cal environment of global, national and local. Web sites proclaim the character of the school but also celebrate their local status while national league tables pin point their level of achievement locally and nationally. Their global responsibility is mirrored in their commitment to raising achievement for the labour market and the national economy. The post-modern professional teacher is now a total teacher taking on everything and anything that policy demands as well as their own interests and values, for example contrasting performative and creative pedagogies. The commitment of the postmodern professional has been gained through the development of team work and collaboration, the necessity to improve performative targets and the survival of their institution in a market orientated environment. Economic imperatives drive education policy and they now include creative and entrepreneurialist market approaches, team cultures and a discourse of performativity. The Total Teacher has to ensure the raising of achievement by reaching targets based on external testing, support the institution in maintaining its market position and status, use team strategies and develop creative learners. This paper examines the life of the total professional who plays a major role in the development of the embracing institution

Role of asynchronous awareness in digital art creation

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85).The majority of visitors to sites on the World Wide Web (WWW) have traditionally been only passive observers; consumers of previously created content. More recently, however, these users have been encouraged to contribute to these sites, opening the door to new forms of creative self expression. As we enter this new era of widespread collaboration and sharing made possible by the WWW, one question that remains is how to build appropriate communication channels to and from this new medium with respect to the tools used for digitally mediated creative expression. In this thesis, I will attempt to formulate a coherent set of characteristics that both creative programming environments and their associated WWW sites must possess to help improve, inspire, and support the work of creative individuals using these systems, which I will refer to as architectures for web-based collectivity.by Kyle Matthew Buza.S.M

Shared Artefacts and Virtual Worlds in Computer-Mediated Creative Collaboration

Virtual teams are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon within the globalizing surroundings of corporations. The communication between virtual team members is predominantly based on information and communication technology. The question, how different ICT collaboration environments can support different virtual team activities, has gained attention in research and practice. However, collaboration environments' role to foster creative virtual team collaboration is not entirely understood. This dissertation addresses the topic by focusing on the potential of artefacts and three-dimensional virtual worlds. Artefacts – shared visual representations – have been considered necessary for co-located creative collaboration. Though, the entire ecology of artefacts in distributed, computer-mediated creative collaboration has thus far remained unclear. While previous studies have suggested virtual worlds as beneficial for creative team collaboration, a systematic effort to characterize and describe this potential has not been undertaken. The four essays of this dissertation utilize real-life observational data of interaction between technical experts, decision-makers, and engineering designers. Either a web conferencing tool or a virtual world was employed as a collaboration environment during the observed interaction sessions. The first essay outlines virtual worlds' eight affordances towards creative team collaboration. The second essay investigates the question, how the two-dimensional web conferencing tool and virtual world differ in terms of supporting the use of shared visual artefacts. The third essay broadens the observation of the artefacts by studying their roles as boundary objects, which mediate communication within an intersection of different social worlds. Grounding on these results, the fourth essay addresses the artefacts' role in distributed teams' different collaborative activities within creative virtual world collaboration. Findings of the study demonstrate virtual worlds' potential to foster team creativity. Meanwhile the findings indicate a variety of artefacts that are utilized within creative virtual team collaboration, ranging from epistemic to technical objects. Grounding on the observed contrast between the virtual world and web conferencing tool, the results end up in suggesting an expansion of separated auditory and visual channel information to the concept of boundary objects. While the study conveys practical relevance for virtual teams that engage in creative collaboration, it also outlines potential directions to future ICT collaboration environments development path.Virtuaalitiimit yleistyvät liiketoiminnan globalisoituessa. Virtuaalitiimien jäsenet viestivät pääosin tieto- ja viestintäteknologian välityksellä. Tutkimuksessa ja käytännön työssä on havaittu, että eri tieto- ja viestintäteknologiset vuorovaikutusympäristöt voivat tukea virtuaalitiimien eri toimintoja. Vuorovaikutusympäristöjen roolia virtuaalitiimin luovan työn tukemisessa ei kuitenkaan ole täysin ymmärretty. Väitöskirja käsittelee aihetta suunnaten huomion artefaktoihin ja kolmiulotteisiin virtuaalimaailmoihin. Artefaktat – yhteiset visuaaliset dokumentit – on aiemmin mielletty välttämättömiksi samanpaikkaisessa luovassa yhteistyössä. Artefaktojen rooli monipaikkaisessa, tietokonevälitteisessä luovassa yhteistyössä on kuitenkin vielä selvittämättä. Aiemmat tutkimukset ovat arvioineet virtuaalimaailmojen olevan suotuisia luovalle tiimin vuorovaikutukselle; näkökantaa ei kuitenkaan ole luonnehdittu tai kuvattu järjestelmällisesti. Väitöskirjan neljä esseetä hyödyntävät dataa teknisten asiantuntijoiden, päätöksentekijöiden ja teollisten suunnittelijoiden tosielämän vuorovaikutustilanteista. Vuorovaikutusympäristöinä käytettiin web-konferenssityökalua tai kolmiulotteista virtuaalimaailmaa. Ensimmäinen esseistä linjaa kahdeksan kolmiulotteisen virtuaalimaailman ominaispiirrettä, jotka tukevat luovan tiimin vuorovaikutusta. Toinen esseistä selvittää, miten visuaalisesti kaksiulotteinen web-konferenssityökalu ja kolmiulotteinen virtuaalimaailma eroavat toisistaan artefaktojen käytön osalta. Kolmas essee tarkastelee artefaktoja rajaesineinä, jotka välittävät viestintää erillisten sosiaalisten maailmojen leikkauskohdassa. Tuloksiin perustuen neljäs essee tarkastelee visuaalisten artefaktojen roolia monipaikkaisten, hajautettujen tiimien erilaisissa yhteistyöaktiviteeteissa luovan virtuaalimaailma-vuorovaikutuksen yhteydessä. Tutkimustulokset havainnollistavat virtuaalimaailman potentiaalin edistää luovaa tiimitason vuorovaikutusta. Tulokset esittelevät luovien virtuaalitiimien hyödyntämien artefaktojen kirjon, ulottuen episteemisistä teknisiin objekteihin. Havaittuihin virtuaalimaailman ja web-konferenssityökalun eroavaisuuksiin perustuen esitetään visuaalisen ja auditiivisen viestintäkanavan eroon pohjautuvaa laajennusta rajaesineiden käsitteeseen. Siinä missä tutkimus on merkittävä luovaan vuorovaikutukseen osallistuvien virtuaalitiimien kannalta, se myös linjaa mahdollisia suuntia tulevaisuuden tieto- ja viestintäteknologian kehityspolulle

The Rejoinders (Exhibition)

The Rejoinders was an artist practitioner network involving researchers in India and Wales, funded by the British Council and Arts Council Wales / Wales Arts International programme as part of the UK / India Year of Culture 2017-18. Realised in collaboration with g39, CONA Foundation, What About Art? and University of Worcester. The project received a total production budget of £28,500, with additional in-kind support. The Rejoinders had the following research aims: · The production of a new curatorial framework (both a conceptual model and practical tool) that could bring creative practitioners from Wales and India together. · Digital innovation through the production of a web-platform as a working resource, and a tool for articulation in the very realisation of its form. · The development of a practice-based approach to building a new language of collaboration across regions and disciplines. The Rejoinders network explored spaces or creativity by focusing on a variety of practices, including fine art, graphic design, web design, sound recording, and geography. As a key research outcome, The Rejoinders network developed a collaborative curatorial model which can be adopted by the wider arts sector. The project operated between May 2017 – August 2018, included a programme of studio visits; a purpose-built tool for collaboration (www.therejoinders.org); four artist residencies; culminating in a public exhibition (11/05/18 – 02/06/18) and the production of twelve original artworks. Artists and researchers involved in the network included: Salik Ansari, Neha Chaturvedi, Dhruv Jani, Lauren Heckler, Rujuta Rao, AJ Stockwell, Neasa Terry, Fern Thomas, KATCONA DESIGN CELL; Paul Goodfield (Web Designer); Per Törnberg (Graphic Designer); Dr Jonathan Prior (Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University, and Sound Artist); and Amanda Colbourne (Evaluation Consultant)

The Rejoinders (Web-platform)

The Rejoinders was an artist practitioner network involving researchers in India and Wales, funded by the British Council and Arts Council Wales / Wales Arts International programme as part of the UK / India Year of Culture 2017-18. Realised in collaboration with g39, CONA Foundation, What About Art? and University of Worcester. The project received a total production budget of £28,500, with additional in-kind support. The Rejoinders had the following research aims: · The production of a new curatorial framework (both a conceptual model and practical tool) that could bring creative practitioners from Wales and India together. · Digital innovation through the production of a web-platform as a working resource, and a tool for articulation in the very realisation of its form. · The development of a practice-based approach to building a new language of collaboration across regions and disciplines. The Rejoinders network explored spaces or creativity by focusing on a variety of practices, including fine art, graphic design, web design, sound recording, and geography. As a key research outcome, The Rejoinders network developed a collaborative curatorial model which can be adopted by the wider arts sector. The project operated between May 2017 – August 2018, included a programme of studio visits; a purpose-built tool for collaboration (www.therejoinders.org); four artist residencies; culminating in a public exhibition (11/05/18 – 02/06/18) and the production of twelve original artworks. Artists and researchers involved in the network included: Salik Ansari, Neha Chaturvedi, Dhruv Jani, Lauren Heckler, Rujuta Rao, AJ Stockwell, Neasa Terry, Fern Thomas, KATCONA DESIGN CELL; Paul Goodfield (Web Designer); Per Törnberg (Graphic Designer); Dr Jonathan Prior (Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University, and Sound Artist); and Amanda Colbourne (Evaluation Consultant)

Design of a collaborative information and communication technology platform to support creativity in innovation activities - prototyping and user experience test

This research project reports the results of the thesis, “Design of a Collaborative Information and Communication Technology Platform to support Creativity in Innovation Activities -Prototyping and User Experience Test” and provides details of the procedure followed in realizing the thesis. The research was conducted between Fall 2010 and Winter 2013. The research problem was based on an analysis of three challenges observed in innovation activities, especially at the level of creative collaboration among R&D enterprises and creative teams of “Les 24 heures de l’innovation”. These challenges must be overcome before the knowledge production and ideas sharing process can be improved. Three types of challenges were identified: - Communication: The communication of knowledge for innovation, which must be transmitted to successfully resolve complex issues, in the proposal of new products or new services - Organizational: Development of knowledge management strategies for distributed idea sharing, which should be encouraged by the organization to create or support teams by means of a collaborative platform - Technology: Transmission of tacit, unstructured, and informal knowledge, especially using collaborative ICT and technologies Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 tools. This thesis investigates two dimensions of the research problem: the theoretical and the practical (technology issues). The theoretical dimension examines the environment for the exchange of ideas and knowledge, which supports creative collaboration in distributed conditions. The practical and technological dimensions involve a creative collaboration model which will take the form of a platform for creative teams. The aim of this thesis is to support the creative teams in the process of conceptualization of a new innovation-oriented product. Through this thesis, we seek to: - Determine the needs of creative teams during the conceptualization stage of a new product; - Propose a Knowledge Management System (knowledge and tools) that enables the support of tacit knowledge produced in distributed condition of team members; - Modeling a Platform that supports internal creative team’s needs and the external context for innovation; - Propose the assessment of the creative collaboration meaning the user experience testing and the realized task by creative teams on the ICT prototype. We carry out a review of the literature in Chapter 1, a study of collaboration among creative R&D teams in Canada in Chapter 2, and in Chapter 4, we perform a knowledge needs analysis of creative teams in “Les 24 heures de l’innovation”. These will enable us to achieve the first objective, the definition of the needs for supporting creative teams. Ultimately, we characterize the context of R&D activities in Canada, as well as interactions among creative R&D teams for innovation, with a theoretical study, by analyzing statistical data obtained from Statistics Canada. A detailed presentation of the problem statement and the methodology used for this thesis is provided in Chapter 3. The second objective is fulfilled by analyzing the idea production process and the current ICTs, for proposing a conceptual model based on the observation of creative teams participating in “Les 24 heures de l’innovation” November 2011. On the other hand, by proposing the new specifications that support collaboration, we select a methodology based on the law of ideality (TRIZ), in which we observe the evolution of technological state-of-the-art of current functionalities (Chapter 5) in contrast with the needs and useful operations of ICT. To realize the third objective, we model the collaborative platform, and its primary functionalities are presented using the UML 2, Unified Modeling Language, also we describe the prototype deployment at Chapter 6. The fourth objective is reached by an experimental evaluation of the platform that is presented in Chapter 7 and in Chapter 8. These chapters summarize the results obtained by the application of the following user experience test: validation of UML use-cases user’s acceptance, the task analysis of the main used functionalities, the creative performance Analysis of user (PAN) and the usability test. Finally, the other sections of this document are the conclusion, findings, proposals for further research, and recommendations. In the Appendix, we include the ethical plan presented to the École de technologie supérieure Ethical Review Board, as well as the results obtained from “Les 24 heures de l’innovation” of May 2012

The Rejoinders (Portfolio)

The Rejoinders was an artist practitioner network involving researchers in India and Wales, funded by the British Council and Arts Council Wales / Wales Arts International programme as part of the UK / India Year of Culture 2017-18. Realised in collaboration with g39, CONA Foundation, What About Art? and University of Worcester. The project received a total production budget of £28,500, with additional in-kind support. The Rejoinders had the following research aims: · The production of a new curatorial framework (both a conceptual model and practical tool) that could bring creative practitioners from Wales and India together. · Digital innovation through the production of a web-platform as a working resource, and a tool for articulation in the very realisation of its form. · The development of a practice-based approach to building a new language of collaboration across regions and disciplines. The Rejoinders network explored spaces or creativity by focusing on a variety of practices, including fine art, graphic design, web design, sound recording, and geography. As a key research outcome, The Rejoinders network developed a collaborative curatorial model which can be adopted by the wider arts sector. The project operated between May 2017 – August 2018, included a programme of studio visits; a purpose-built tool for collaboration (www.therejoinders.org); four artist residencies; culminating in a public exhibition (11/05/18 – 02/06/18) and the production of twelve original artworks. Artists and researchers involved in the network included: Salik Ansari, Neha Chaturvedi, Dhruv Jani, Lauren Heckler, Rujuta Rao, AJ Stockwell, Neasa Terry, Fern Thomas, KATCONA DESIGN CELL; Paul Goodfield (Web Designer); Per Törnberg (Graphic Designer); Dr Jonathan Prior (Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University, and Sound Artist); and Amanda Colbourne (Evaluation Consultant)