A Computational Study of Creativity In Design: the Role of Society (original) (raw)

Social models of creativity: Integrating the DIFI and FBS frameworks to study creative design

2005

This paper presents a framework for experimentation about design as a social activity. It accounts for the complementarity of generative and evaluative processes by individuals and groups and is used to inspect phenomena associated with creativity in the interaction between designers and their societies. The results illustrate ways in which the role of designers as change agents of their societies can be largely determined by how evaluating groups self-organise over time. An implication is that the isolated characteristics of designers may be insufficient to formulate conclusions about the nature and effects of their behaviour. Instead, causality could be attributed to situational factors that define the relationship between designers and their evaluators.

Beyond binary choices: Integrating individual and social creativity

International Journal of …, 2005

The power of the unaided individual mind is highly overrated. Although society often thinks of creative individuals as working in isolation, intelligence and creativity result in large part from interaction and collaboration with other individuals. Much human creativity is social, arising from activities that take place in a context in which interaction with other people and the artifacts that embody collective knowledge are essential contributors. This paper examines: (1) how individual and social creativity can be integrated by means of proper collaboration models and tools supporting distributed cognition; (2) how the creation of shareable externalizations (''boundary objects'') and the adoption of evolutionary process models in the construction of meta-design environments can enhance creativity and support spontaneous design activities (''unselfconscious cultures of design''); and (3) how a new design competence is emerging-one that requires passage from individual creative actions to synergetic activities, from the reflective practitioner to reflective communities and from given tasks to personally meaningful activities. The paper offers examples in the context of collaborative design and art practice, including urban planning, interactive art and open source. In the effort to draw a viable path ''beyond binary choices'', the paper points out some ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhcs (E. Giaccardi). major challenges for the next generation of socio-technical environments to further increase the integration of individual and social creativity. r

Towards a Computational Model of Creative Societies Using Curious Design Agents

Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII, 2007

This paper present a novel approach to modelling creative societies using curious design agents. The importance of modelling the social aspects of creativity are first presented and a novel agent-based approach is developed. Curious design agents are introduced as an appropriate model of individuals in a creative society. Some of the advantages of using curious design agents to model creative societies are discussed. Results from some initial investigations into self-organisation within creative societies using the model are given. This paper concludes by discussing some related work and exploring possible directions for future work.

The sociology of creativity: PART III: Applications – The socio-cultural contexts of the acceptance/rejection of innovations

The three-part article of which this one is Part III is predicated on the principle that creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective to adaptation and sustainability. This work on the sociology of creativity has three purposes: (1) to develop the argument that key factors in creative activity are socially based and developed; hence, sociology can contribute significantly to understanding and explaining human creativity; (2) to present a systems approach which enables us to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate social factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and to describe and explain creativity; (3) to illustrate a sociological systems theory's (Actor-Systems-Dynamics) conceptualization of multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors and mechanisms – and their role in creativity and innovative developments in diverse empirical cases. Part I of this article introduced and applied a general model of innovation and creative development stressing the socio-cultural and political embeddedness of agents, either as individuals or groups, in their creative activities and innovative productions. Part II investigated the " context of innovation and discovery " considering a wide range of applications and illustrations. This 3rd segment, Part III, specifies and analyzes the " context of receptivity and institutionalization " where innovations and creative developments are socially accepted, legitimized, and institutionalized or rejected and suppressed. A number of cases and illustrations are considered. Power considerations are part and parcel of these analyses, for instance the role of the state as well as powerful private interests and social movements in facilitating and/or constraining innovations and creative developments in society. In the perspective presented here, generally speaking, creativity can be consistently and systematically considered to a great extent as social, cultural, institutional and material as much as psychological or biological.

Creative design situations

Eshaq, A, Khong, C, Neo, K, Neo, M and Ahmad, S l.(eds), CAADRIA, 2002

Abstract. This paper presents the outline of experiments with a behaviourbased computational model of creativity in design called Creative Design Situations. This model aims to allow the study of social creativity through the computational implementation of a community of creative design agents.