I600

IU School of Informatics - Indianapolis Steven Entezari

[SOCIAL CREATIVITY WITHIN COMPUTER MEDIATED DESIGN]

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Introduction
Creativity has long been viewed as an individual process that occurs in isolation (Sternberg, 1988) without much concern for the interactions of groups of individuals and the outcome of their collaboration. Social creativity is the emphasis on the fact that creativity grows from the individual and their interactions with their environment, artifacts, and externalization of ideas (Fischer, Social Creativity: Making All Voices Heard, 2005). Works on social creativity have focused on the socio-technical environment by which individuals collaborate to develop creativity on items of shared interest. Socio-technical environments are contexts that merge social domains, such as the interactions of people, and technological means of interaction (Mumford, 1985). Social creativity is a subject that spans across multiple domains. The main domain of interest for this literature review is one of design. Creative design is an economic, political, social, and cultural interest (Julier, 2009). The impact of social creativity on design will be discussed from various themes in the literature. Generally, social creativity within design surrounds the idea that social creativity and individual creativity is not a versus comparison, but rather an and comparison (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005). In other words, social creativity emphasizes both the individuals creative efforts and the creative efforts of the group. The themes themselves will construct the new perspective known as social creativity and breakdown the constructs that have developed through various examples and theories rooted in creativity and social interaction.

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Social creativity has been utilized as a theory far before any literature was ever published on it. Enough time and publications have been presented now, however, that a summation and review of the major content and themes within social creativity is called for. A synthesized understanding of creativity within the design culture has not been established and may act as a starting point or catalyst for future research to be initiated and other avenues, perhaps even outside of design, to be explored. This review will take a thematic approach to the literature and present key findings resulting from a wide array of works done to explore social creativity within the design context.

Objectives
The spectrum of social creativity has yet to be lineated. There are many approaches that utilize aspects of social creativity without having a clear understanding or having a model to raise awareness to what aspects of social creativity they are implementing versus what aspects of social creativity are available to them. One major objective of this literature review is to bring light to the themes stretching over the literature regarding social creativity. Social creativity is nothing without a medium. Works discussed throughout this review will focus on the design domain of social creativity. This manifests itself in many ways, however, it is an objective of this review to focus on the socio-technical aspects of social creativity in the design domain. Within this socio-technical context, much emphasis will also be placed on the computer mediated aspects of design and peoples interaction with the socio-technical environment.

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Themes and Discussion

Distances
The literature presents four distinct distances across the domain of social creativity. Distances are defined as the distribution of design within a collaborative context across spatial, temporal, technological, and conceptual domains (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005). The specific distances that encompass social creativity are better defined as: Spatial distanced by physical, geographic location of team members within the same project. (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005) Temporal distanced by time such that the design of a product may span multiple generations of designers, thus losing awareness of rationale during the decision making process for the designs characteristics. (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005) Technological distanced by collaborative methods within the computer mediated design domain itself. This distance can be created as a product of the spatial and temporal distances. (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005) Conceptual distanced by stakeholder and participatory input on the design process. That is, the different needs of the different players being addressed in a fashion that supports a creative outcome via common ground and a shared understanding. (Fischer, Social Creativity: Turning Barriers into Opportunities for Collaborative Design, 2004)

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Addressing the barriers and opportunities within these separate distances is the means of designing a system that is aware of social creativity. Fischer (2004) addresses some barriers to these distances: Spatial Collaborative design is difficult across current computer mediated communication practices. Temporal Long term collaboration projects require todays designers to be aware of yesterdays design rationale. Also, in current design frameworks, there is an inability to modify a systems functionality given the changes in context from its instantiation to deployment. Technological Humans understanding through technological facets is not always understood. Feedback given via a technological medium may not allow a message to be conveyed as intended. Conceptual There lacks an understanding between experts and novices, whom in a design initiative may have equal input on the designs direction. There are also misunderstandings between stakeholders across different practices for designs that cross the domain lines. Fisher (2004) also addresses some opportunities that are elucidated through these distances. These allow social creativity to emerge within a given context, with the following opportunities: Spatial Emphasis can be placed more heavily on the ideas and concerns rather than the location of the individuals within the group. Ideas become more universal and less

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

attached to a physical location. Also, the diversity of the information becomes wider, contributing to the growth of creative ideologies. Temporal There can exist a long-term, indirect collaborative opportunity for the individuals within community of designers. Also, designers not only need to know the rationale behind the decisions that were made at the initiation of the project, but anything they can about possible alternatives what were considered as well as the ability to adapt a system to its environment during runtime (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005). Technological With newer media, cognition and the understandings of task-oriented knowledge will change to accommodate the new media. Conceptual Externalizations of ideas can now emerge and make ideas concrete. Boundary objects, externalizations of group ideas, can emerge as the focal points for conversations, interactions, and fill technological and conceptual gaps. Breaking through the barriers of these distances is the means by how social creativity comes to light. The authors discuss some examples of how these barriers have been broken down with practical applications. CLever is a project that was designed to share and learn from experiences within a specific domain and provide professional and social support for caregivers and people with cognitive disabilities (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005, p. 2). There are also social implications of these distances and their impact on social creativity. One example within the literature regards groupthink and what happens within the community. The support and management of heterogeneity within the ideas

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

of groups is done by connecting the dots that may not have been connected before and exploit breakdowns within the distances to the participants at a technological and social level (Fischer & Eden, Supporting Social Creativity: Promises and Pitfalls, 2009). Also, a goal of any collaborative system, especially with the creativity realm, is to attempt to avoid the phenomenon of group think. It has been identified that within the social creativity context, communities that address problems which are dispersed within domains (as opposed to between domains) suffer the strongest likelihood of groupthink (Fischer, Social Creativity: Exploiting the Power of Cultures of Participation, 2011).

Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding Model

Stemming from the temporal distance described before, the SER model focuses on methods of enhancing social creativity by utilizing methods of social psychology to structure the lifespan of a socially creative community. The SER model consists of (Huysman & Wulf, 2004): Seeding Creating an initial system or community focused within a specific domain. Evolutionary Growth Users make changes to modify and extend the original system/ community into a more customized, personal system that they can use and interact with more fluidly, promoting higher levels of social creativity. Reseeding New systems/communities are developed when original ones are maxed out or have reached a concrete scope. Examples that use the SER model include Open source software programming platforms, the online forum Experts Exchange, and a course management software named Courses-as-seeds. An overarching theme to the context of social capital within

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

social creativity seems to be the aspect of trust. Trust within a community like this must begin strong (Seeding), develop or decay based on the social rules of the participants (Evolutionary Growth), and develop a trust model within the system for other topics and concerns (Reseeding) (Huysman & Wulf, 2004). Pitfalls to the social creativity realm have also been established utilizing the SER model. Specifically, the aspect of social creativity ignoring motivation can make changes seem like they are not possible to be made within a system, preventing the evolutionary growth of that system (Fischer & Eden, Supporting Social Creativity: Promises and Pitfalls, 2009).

Socio-Technical Environment
Socio-technical environments, as described earlier, are the contexts that merge social domains, such as the interactions of people, and technological means of interaction (Mumford, 1985). These socio-technical environments provide the means necessary to collaborate with a community and participate in meta-design. Meta-design is thought of as the practice of moving from access participation to informed participation by way of the technical products that connect individuals and groups (Fischer, Designing sociotechnical environments in support of meta-design and social creativity, 2007). Pitfalls within the implementation of socio-technical environments are elements that impede its ability to mediate social creativity. Socio-technical environments need to be adaptable to not only technical changes but social and cultural changes as well. Items like meta design which are mediated through these socio-technical environments involve not just computers and networks, but also people, policies, laws, social structures, morals and the like (Fischer & Eden, Supporting Social Creativity: Promises

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

and Pitfalls, 2009). Socio-technical mediums also allow for extrinsic motivators to build communities within the creative design domain (Huysman & Wulf, 2004). Methods of supporting creativity within social communities have also been identified. Boundary objects allow individuals and groups to externalize their ideas and reach shared understandings across all distances (spatial, temporal, technical, and conceptual) (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005). These boundary objects result in domain oriented design environments which support human-problem domain interaction, increase the backtalk of the collaborative design, and integrate action and reflection into the design process (Fischer, Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity, 2005). These aim to answer the fundamental question within socio-technical environment with social creative design, How do we avoid the situation that voices get lost because there is too much information or their input does not get recorded (Fischer, Social Creativity: Making All Voices Heard, 2005). These externalizations, the boundary objects, will allow individuals and groups to externalize their tacit knowledge. This shift will be the means of interaction that moves individuals and groups from conceptualizing an abstract idea to identifying a concrete idea while creating a common, visual, language (Huysman & Wulf, 2004). Creativity emerges through the support of distances and diversity via these boundary objects (Fischer & Shipman, Collaborative Design Rationale and Social Creativity in Cultures of Participation, 2011).

Conclusions

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Within the domain of computer mediated design, social creativity emerges as a key player in the ability for communities to collaborate with members of other communities while ensuring voices get heard and focus remains on the design being produced. Distances and their barriers have proven to be elements that if overcome, can promote the interconnectedness of a design community. Once these barriers have been overcome, SER model processes can ensure that the lifespan of communities are capable of surviving on their own, given their unique social structure. Socio-technical environments, being the medium for the interactions in itself, must have established guidelines and understandable contexts (or adaptable contexts). The identification of these themes and concepts across the domain of social creativity will help design teams identify methods that can be utilized to induce creative outcomes within a group. Implementing these themes can open the door for more advanced research in the field of social creativity, by not needing to focus on the essential elements of a creative socio-technical environment, but by focusing on the outcomes from these environments and the interactions within them.

Steven Entezari

October 6th 2011

Works Cited
Fischer, G. (2007). Designing socio-technical environments in support of meta-design and social creativity. CSCL'07 Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning . Fischer, G. (2005). Distances and Diversity: Sources for Social Creativity. Proceedings of Creativity & Cognition . Fischer, G. (2011). Social Creativity: Exploiting the Power of Cultures of Participation. Proceedings of SKG2011: 7th International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grids . Fischer, G. (2005). Social Creativity: Making All Voices Heard. Boulder: University of Colorado Center for LifeLong Learning and Design Department of Computer Science. Fischer, G. (2004). Social Creativity: Turning Barriers into Opportunities for Collaborative Design. PDC 04 Proceedings of the eighth conference on Participatory design: Artful integration: interweaving media, materials and practices . Fischer, G., & Eden, H. (2009). Supporting Social Creativity: Promises and Pitfalls. Proceedings of the NSF CreativeIT workshop at Arizona State University . Fischer, G., & Shipman, F. (2011). Collaborative Design Rationale and Social Creativity in Cultures of Participation. Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments . Huysman, M., & Wulf, V. (2004). Social Capital and Information Technology. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Julier, G. (2009). Design and Creativity : Policy, Management and Practice. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Mumford, E. (1985). Sociotechnical Systems Design: Evolving Theory and Practice. Manchester: Manchester Business School and Centre for Business Research. Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The Nature of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.