On October 18, more than two dozen chapter members and others interested in usability issues gathered in Bethesda to hear Dr

Dr. Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory)
Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge

On October 18, 2006, roughly two dozen chapter members and others interested in usability issues gathered in Bethesda to hear Dr. Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory) talk about Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge.

In brief, Ben urged that creativity support tools is a research topic with high risk but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved software and user interfaces that empower diverse users in the sciences and arts to be more productive and more innovative. Potential users include a combination of software and other engineers, diverse scientists, product designers, graphic designers, and architects, as well as writers, poets, musicians, new media artists, and many others.

Enhanced interfaces could enable more effective searching of intellectual resources, improved collaboration among teams, and more rapid discovery processes. These advanced interfaces should also provide potent support in goal setting, speedier exploration of alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better dissemination of results. For creative endeavors that require composition of novel artifacts (computer programs, engineering diagrams, symphonies, animations, artwork), enhanced interfaces could facilitate rapid exploration of alternatives, prevent unproductive choices, and enable easy backtracking.

Two key human factors issues are (1) Formulation of guidelines for design of creativity support tools (2) Novel research methods to assess creativity support tools. These issues will be the core of the June 2007 Conference on Creativity and Cognition in Washington, DC (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/CC2007).

You can find his slides on the HCIL Presentations page: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/presentations/ Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge (October 2006)

Other relevant papers can be found at: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/tech-reports.shtml

The Human Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) home page is at: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/

Next Meeting -- Mark your calendars!

On Thursday, November 9, Dr. Arthur D. Fisk (Georgia Institute of Technology; past president, HFES) will speak about "Designing Aware Homes as Collaborative Systems: Acceptance, Trust, and Privacy Concerns." The meeting will be held at Positano in Bethesda, starting with networking at 6:00 pm. Details about Dr. Fisk, his talk, and the location and schedule for the meeting are available here:
http://users.erols.com/hfespoc/nextmtg.htm

We hope to see everyone there!