Shneiderman Announces Report on Creativity Support Tools

Ben Shneiderman of of the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science sent out an announcement today about the release of an important report on creativity support tools. This is an emerging class of tools that supports knowledge and creative workers by helping them generate and work with ideas, collaborate and share knowledge in new ways.

The complete report is available at this web site on the Workshop on Creativity Support Tools.

These excerpts from Shneiderman's announcement will give you an idea of the topic of the report (80 pages):

"Enthusiasts envision accelerating innovation through advanced science collaboratories, design environments, open source communities, and knowledge management tools. They promote idea generation and brainstorming tools for divergent thinking followed by knowledge organization and concept mapping software for convergent processing ....

"The promise of making more people more creative more of the time is compelling, but research on creativity support tools is just beginning. Proposed support tools are meant to serve individuals as they grapple with problems, as well as cross-disciplinary teams working in close collaboration even when separated by distance. Even more ambitious is the provision of social creativity support tools for larger communities working in rich socio-technical environments over longer time periods."

AB -- 2/6/06