Creativity Mining: Humane Technology for Creating a Creative Society

This paper proposes a novel concept called “Creativity Mining.” Even though it is quite difficult for general people to create novel things, that does not mean that we are not creative. We all potentially have creativity. We simply cannot manifest our potential creativity at will or are unaware of its existence. In this sense, perhaps we are not uncreative but not-yet-creative. To increase creative human resources to establish the coming “Creative Society,” we require new technologies for finding the buried creativity deep within not-yet-creative people and for supporting its manifestation. Although creativity support technologies have been widely studied, they have supported the creative activities of already creative people. They are not useful for supporting not-yet-creative people. In contrast, creativity mining technology supports not-yet-creative people to find and confirm their potential creativity. We illustrate two example systems developed at the author’s laboratory and discuss how they work as creativity mining systems and their requisites

An Intrablog-Based Informal Communication Encouraging System that Seamlessly Links On-Line Communications to Off-Line Ones

In this paper, we propose an intrablog-based informal communication encouraging system named "Attractiblog." It has been pointed out that daily informal communications at a shared public space play very important role in information sharing in an organization. However, in most cases, the communications are often mere chats. To make the communications more informative, it is necessary to feed some common and beneficial topics there. Attractiblog is a system that extracts some articles posted in an intrablog considering who are in the shared space, and show them on a large-sized display that is located in the space. Thus, Attractiblog attempts to seamlessly link on-line communications to off-line communications. We conducted user studies and confirmed that Attractiblog can achieve a natural correspondence between topics in face-to-face informal communications and issues related to the activities of an organization as given in its intrablog

BrainTranscending: A Hybrid Divergent Thinking Method that Exploits Creator Blind Spots

Divergent thinking methods play a very important role in creating new ideas for planning and/or development activities based on specific themes or existing objects. However, even when using existing divergent thinking methods, it remains difficult to conceptualize truly novel ideas because creators are typically constrained by their fixed ideas. Therefore, we propose a novel divergent thinking method named “BrainTranscending (BT)” that exploits Brainstorming (BS), a typical divergent thinking method, as a way to identify the creator’s fixed ideas, rather than generate ideas, and thus support the further expansion of those ideas. We conducted user studies and confirmed that the number of idea groups that were created by BT significantly increased compared to typical brainstorming. Furthermore, the subjects evaluated the final ideas created with BT and determined that the quality was better than that of BS. We also propose the “Reduced BrainTranscending (RBT)” method for alleviating the heavy cognitive load that BT imposes on creators. We conducted user studies of RBT to investigate its usefulness and, consequently, concluded that BT and RBT are effective methods for supporting divergent thinking aimed at improving existing products

Apollon13: A Training System for Emergency Situations in a Piano Performance

During a piano performance, there is always the possibility that the musician will cease playing on account of an unexpected mistake. In a concert, such a situation amounts to an emergency state in the piano performance. Therefore, we propose a system named “Apollon13” that simulates emergency states by replacing particular notes with different ones, in the manner of miss-touches, by referring to the performer’s degree of proficiency as determined by a performance estimation algorithm. From the results of user studies, we confirmed that Apollon13 is basically effective as a training system for handling emergency states. However, the estimation algorithm could not precisely identify the note-replacement points where the subjects become upset. Accordingly, we evaluated the estimation algorithm by comparing it with the player’s subjective assessment based on the data of an experiment. As a result, we found a clear relationship between the subjective assessment and the points, obtained by experiment, at which players become upset. This result suggests that an algorithm could gain the ability to detect the “upset points” by approximating a human’s subjective assessment.Proceedings of the 6th International Conference, AMT 2010, Toronto, Canada, August 28-30, 2010

A Dual-Role Collaborative Learning Support System for Simultaneous Speaking Acquisition in English and Japanese

Learning a foreign language is becoming more vital in Japan as a result of globalization. It gives foreigners various reasons to study Japanese including working or living in Japan. They should exchange language and skills and generate opportunities for engagement. Assisting them in exchanging linguistic skills and knowledge is critical. This study first proposes a theoretical model of dual-role collaborative learning to improve second language learners’speaking skills. Learners will participate as facilitators in their native language and receivers in their second language. Some supporting features must be given, followed by a computer-supported collaborative learning(CSCL)named　BiTak,which is a video chat system that allows strict turn-taking dual-lingual conversation. The learner's progress is positively evaluated by language teachers using a rubric scoring framework. Based on the experiment results, it was concluded that BiTak has turned users’ perspectives of video chat programs into collaborative learning platforms, allowing them to act as facilitators and receivers