Creativity Support Environments

2022-2024
CHI EA '23
Invited article
Keywords: Creativity

Abstract

To realize a creative society in which people want to create content with the help of AI technologies, a sustainable ecosystem in which content inspires the next creation serves a critical role.

I shed light on the creative culture in such an ecosystem, build a "creativity support environment (CSE)" that supports the content creation and distribution process, and aim to establish Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) technologies that engineer, nurture, and maintain the creative culture.

Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing (SIGCCC)

With the help of the researchers working on creativity support whom I respect and admire, a Special Interest Group meeting was held at ACM CHI 2023. Please refer to the event page for more details.

Research on creativity support tools (CSTs) has a long history in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); however, researchers often focus on developing novel CSTs and verifying them in a controlled lab setting, rather than on capturing the creative process in the wild.

In reality, creative activity is exploratory, laborious, and involves multiple CSTs; which together form a creativity support environment or ecology. Creative activity is also social, cultural, and collaborative with people distributing, modifying, and reacting to the creations of others. This process can inspire subsequent iterations. To understand and support open-ended, culturally embedded, collaborative creativity, HCI researchers are seeking new methods to study the sociocultural aspects of creativity support.

This Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing (SIGCCC) invites diverse researchers to provide a forum for CST discussions from a wide sociocultural lens. The participants will identify and discuss the state-of-the-art and conceptualize future directions for creativity support research.

On the Relationship between HCI Researchers and Creators
— or How I Became a Toolsmith

XRDS is the ACM's quarterly magazine for students. As part of its featured edition exploring the horizon of computation for creativity, I contributed an article that discusses the importance of helping creative activities "in the wild," reflecting my research experience.

Research on creativity support tools in Human-Computer Interaction often focuses on novel interaction design, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

This article discusses the importance of helping creative activities "in the wild" through the author's experience of immersing himself in the creators' environment, talking to them to understand their needs, and revealing the rich history via multidisciplinary studies.

It highlights two case studies: TextAlive, developing an AI-enabled creativity support environment for authoring and distributing lyric videos and apps, and Griffith, developing a web-based storyboarding tool.

These examples emphasize the need for a slow-paced yet in-depth research process that blends technological innovation with a deep appreciation of the cultural contexts of the creative process.

Publications

Cite this!2023CHI EA '23

Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing

Jun Kato, Jonas Frich, Zhicong Lu, Jennifer Jacobs, Kumiyo Nakakoji, Celine Latulipe
Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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On the Relationship between HCI Researchers and Creators---Or How I Became a Toolsmith

2023Invited article
Jun Kato
XRDS 29(4), pp.26-31

Revision history

3/31/2023
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