On Creativity
Posted by meero on November 12, 2005
In Fall of 2002, I took a very interesting class on creativity support tools with one of my favorite professors: Ben Shneiderman. The course introduced us to several tools that empowers people to be more creative by presenting them with the right medium to find resources (Idea Processors, Thesauri, Brainstorming) , creating maps and collaboration.
I remember Ben’s opening statement was: “I believe with the right tools, we can make more people more creative most of the time!”. I also remember raising my hand, and immediately objecting Ben’s statement stating that I know few people who can never be creative even if they were given the best tools in the world. Ben accepted my objection with his pleasant smile, and told me that it’s my right not to agree. A year later, I went to Ben’s office and told him that I believe his statement was true. I have been using some tools myself that exploited more of my creativity than I ever imagined! FreeMind is one of the tools that I use every day in almost every task, and I am surprised that Microsoft does not include it in their product pipeline yet. Mind Mapping exists in a very modest way in Visio, but it does not come close to other commercial and freeware tools out there (it requires lots of shifting between the mouse and the keyboard, and this is too expensive interaction overhead for me to handle).
Anyways, you may be asking: “What’s the moral of this blog entry?”.. Well, pretty much the bunch of links below to those interested in trying a more creative touch in their daily lives!
User interfaces for creativity support tools (ACM paper)
Workshop on Creativity Support Tools (Free proceedings)
Creativity resources (From the class’ webpage)
- Creativity Web: Resources for Creativity and Innovation
- Software for Creativity & Idea Generation
- Creax home page
- Creax Creativity Links
- Creativity Based Information Resources: Online Bibliography
- Encyclopedia of Creativity (Runco & Pritzker)
- CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL
Idea Processors, Thesauri, Brainstorming
- dramatica Pro: software products for writers of stories
- Imagination Engineering Software (Clegg & Birch)
- ParaMind: generative brainstorming program
- Basic ParaMind Theory
- Ideas and Knowledge Processing Technologies to Speed Innovation
- IdeaFisher: Creative Brainstorming Software
- TreePad: Award-winning PIM, Database and Word Processor
- Creator Studio: Quickly Create New Ideas and Solve Problems
- Visual Concept: Software to improve your capacity to think
Making Maps
- FreeMind: A freeware Java tool for mind mapping
- Heterarchical Mapping of Information Spaces
- webbrain 2.0
- Topic Maps
- VisiMap – State-of-the-art visual mapping for Microsoft Windows
- Axon Idea Processor: A Visualization Tool for Thinkers
Theories, books, software, webtools
- Innovation Works: Promoting creativity, innovation and invention
- Brainstorming Toolbox
- Innovation Toolbox
- MaxThink
- Inspiration strengthens critical thinking
- CreaTRIZ: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
- Advanced Practical Thinking Training-DeBono
- Dr Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking Training & Software
- Horn’s Visual Language Book
Tyner Blain » Concept maps - great tool for eating the elephant (brainstorming ideas for a new product) said
[...] Concept mapping is a tool I use for the agile/rapid/brainstorming process of defining a product’s specification. IHMC developed this product (available at their website). Thanks to Amir Khella and his blog, Elements of Passion, for leading me to this site. His post, On Creativity, covered a lot of great resources for creative thinking. One link of his was to FreeMind – a freeware mind-mapping program available via sourceforge. The developers of FreeMind did something great – they included a section with a list of alternatives to using FreeMind. I have used mind maps before, and been successful with them – my one complaint was that they optimize on viewing information as trees – essentially spatial outlines. Definitely a valuable tool, but I always had a nagging feeling that what I needed was to be able to express ideas in a graph (instead of each element having exactly one parent, it can have more than one). [...]
Ten Zeros said
Nice and quite extensive list you got there.
I would like to share a thougth I and some friends of me has discussed back and forth this week. We all currently studying art and design here in Stockholm, Sweden. Many of us are pretty tired of be called upon and treated as ‘creative people’. I mean, isn´t everybody creative? You have to be very creative just to go up from bed in the morning – stepping around thousands of objects everyday so you won´t break your body etc. Creativity often means a very specific type of creativity. A learned-to-praise-creativity. Just a thought.. Have a nice day.
BTW.. I´m a heavy user of Mind Manager. Those programs are really great tools if your thinking works best in visual mode.
akhella said
If creativity is basically the power to create, not to imitate (as defined in Webster’s dictionary), then everyone at a certain point in time is creative. However, creativity’s worst enemy is fear of judgement. We can all be very creative if we don’t really care about what people think about the things we do… We do them to express, not to impress.
Creativity has been always mistaken for artistic skills and having a wild imagination. A programmer who writes a new routine is creative and a chef who mixes some ingredients and tries them is creative. The question is: Can the right software make more people more creative more of the time? Ben Shneiderman believes so, and honestly, I also do
James Fletcher Baxter said
Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly
developed, and sensitive perception of diversity. Thus
aware, man is endowed with a natural capability for enact-
ing internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. His title describes
his definitive and typifying characteristic. Recall
that his other features are but vehicles of experi-
ence intent on the development of perceptive
awareness and the following acts of decision and
choice. Note that the products of man cannot define
him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-
making process and include the cognition of self,
the utility of experience, the development of value-
measuring systems and language, and the accultur-
ation of civilization.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however
marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idol-
atry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth’s own
highest expression of the creative process.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. The sublime and
significant act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean
fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of qual-
ity and diversity. Further, it orients him toward a
natural environmental opportunity, freedom, and
bestows earth’s title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by
nature and nature’s God a creature of Choice – and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and re-
spectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is orien-
ted to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the
universe.
The missing element in every human ’solution’ is
an accurate definition of the creature.
The way we define ‘human’ determines our view
of self, others, relationships, institutions, life, and
future. Important? Only the Creator who made us
in His own image is qualified to define us accurately.
Let us proclaim it. Behold!
The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV
– from The HUMAN PARADIGM