Collaborative Creativity

Daniel Gooch
University of Bath
Dept. of Computer Science
Bath
BA2 7AY
dg216@bath.ac.uk

Ryan Kelly
University of Bath
Dept. of Computer Science
Bath
BA2 7AY
rmk22@bath.ac.uk

Peter Lock
University of Bath
Dept. of Computer Science
Bath
BA2 7AY
pl218@bath.ac.uk

Jess Villanueva Perales

University of Bath
Dept. of Computer Science
Bath
BA2 7AY
jvp20@bath.ac.uk

No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
John Donne

Creativity is defined as the ability to produce

work that is novel, high in quality, and
appropriate (Sternberg et al., 2004, p. 351). They
view creativity as a wide-scoping topic that is
important at both individual and societal levels.
Simonton (cited by Sternberg et al., 2004, p. 358)
statistically links eminent levels of creativity in a
society to environmental variables that are sociodependent, such as war, availability of role
models, and number of competitors.

Vera John-Steiner is a professor of Linguistics

and Education at the University of New Mexico,
and author of Creative Collaboration (2000).
She sees a clear distinction between cooperation
and collaboration. In cooperative tasks
individuals make specific contributions and have
differing levels of involvement and intellectual
ownership of the resulting product. In
collaborative endeavors, there is a more fully
realised equality in roles and responsibilities and
participants frequently perceive their task as a
joint effort. This distinction is based on the work
of Damon & Phelps (1989).

The benefits of creativity are incredibly visible in

todays society. However, these creative products
are assumed by Sternberg et al. to be the
consequence of individual creativity. They make
no mention of the direct effect that a collection of
individuals can have on a single project. Rather,
the cognitive process of innovation is presented
as primarily the responsibility of the individual;
interaction between individuals in a creative work
is secondary, manifested in the form of criticism
or encouragement.

John-Steiner talks about the need for breaking

down the boundaries of the self. She quotes
Braque (cited by John-Steiner, 2000, p. 190) as
saying, We are inclined to efface our
personalities in order to find originality.
However, the degree of self-effacing and tentative
listening within a collaborative group can vary, as
can other traits such as relative individual
intellect and domain knowledge. John-Steiner
asserts a collection of distinct yet connected
patterns
of
collaboration:
distributed,
complementary, family and integrative.

Amongst others, we shall analyse primarily the

research of John-Steiner, Sawyer, Fischer and
Shneiderman in an attempt to reconcile an
understanding of collaborative creativity. We will
discuss the aspects of collaboration they consider
to be of importance, before looking at
environments they have developed to support
collaborative creativity. We will also evaluate a
selection of environments and consider their
respective successes and failures.

Distributed collaboration is the most flexible area

of collaboration and therefore the most fragile.
Individuals within a distributed collaborative
group exchange information, ideas and opinions.
However, their roles are informal and
voluntary. As an example, John-Steiner cites

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electronic discussion groups, where one person

may assume a more active organizing role, while
others may remain lurkers. Distributed groups
are based around the task itself, so any major
disagreements may often lead to the dissolution
of the group. However, if deeper ties can be
established, such as respect, friendship or
comradeship, lasting partnerships can often form.

during the course of the work the emphasis of

Ariels role changed to both providing criticism
and suggesting content. It was at this stage that
Will decided to make Ariel co-author of the
series, writing that simple justice required that
the title page should bear both of our names.
John-Steiner concludes that the Durants moved
from being partners in dialogue who cooperated
with each other to full-fledged collaborators.

In complementary collaboration labour is divided

between group members based on the
complementary nature of their individual
expertise, disciplinary knowledge or personality
traits. This division of labour is fixed on
instantiation and remains the same whilst the task
is carried out. Therefore, relationships within the
group are defined by this labour-division, and so
there may be an implied (or indeed, explicit)
hierarchy within the group. It is only the shared
ownership of the final solution that will set the
collaborative group apart from a co-operative
group.

There is a degree of similarity between family

and complementary collaboration. However, the
latter only allows for fixed patterns of
collaboration, whereas the former allows for more
dynamic integration of expertise. The provision
of support structures within family collaboration
is essential: family collaborations without
sufficient support structures will soon break
down. John-Steiner writes that participants help
each other to shift roles, including the move from
novice to a more expert level.
John-Steiner argues that transformative changes
require joint efforts. The weight of disciplinary
and artistic socialization is hard to overcome
without assistance (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 203).
Her claim is that it is within the area of
integrative collaboration that the creation of new
paradigms and art forms is best facilitated. JohnSteiner states that integrative partnerships
require a prolonged period of vision,
concluding that integrative partnerships are
motivated by the desire to transform existing
knowledge, thought styles, or artistic approaches
into new visions.

As an example of complementarity in
collaboration, John-Steiner cites Albert Einsteins
development of the theory of general relativity,
where he enlisted the expertise of close friend
mathematician Marcel Grossmann to explain the
principles of Riemann geometry. Together they
co-authored two papers, and therefore their
endeavor is seen by John-Steiner as
complementarily collaborative, and not simply
cooperation between two domains.
Family collaboration is John-Steiners umbrella
term for collaboration between married or longterm sexual partners, or related individuals such
as siblings. Since the links between collaborators
in a familial context are deeper than the problem
they are addressing, there is a greater degree of
flexibility within the group in terms of roledefinition and responsibility. Trust is something
that is probably already existent to a high degree
between peers within the group or partnership.

John-Steiner uses the example of Cubism, created

and developed by Picasso and Braque in an
integrated, transformative collaboration (JohnSteiner, 2000, p. 203). Within this collaboration
there were no definitions of role; rather both
artists created their individual works, and sought
support, evaluation and fostering from the other.
The work of one of the pair was not thought to be
finished without the approval of the other.
Between them they encouraged one another to
make bolder moves into the newly-defined area
of cubism, a bold artistic movement in which the
subjects are represented simultaneously from

John-Steiner cites the collaboration between the

married couple Will and Ariel Durant, who
together wrote The Story of Civilization (JohnSteiner, 2000, pp. 11-15). Ariel began by simply
classifying the heaps of notes written by Will, but
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different viewpoints using mainly basic shapes.

The confidence of their exploration is evident in
sequential art-pieces.

Sawyer believes that collaboration is the secret to

breakthrough creativity. By building on the work
of John-Steiner, he examines the spontaneous
improvisation of theatre groups and jazz bands,
where group success is often determined by each
participants ability to play off of other group
members. Each individual provides the sparks for
further creative innovations, resulting in an
entertaining performance. He believes that in both
improvisational groups and work teams, each
persons individual contribution provides the
spark for the next.

There is a need for a depth of relationship within

integrative collaborations akin to that within
family collaborations. John-Steiner notes the
overlapping of the boundaries of integrative and
complementary collaboration (John-Steiner,
2000, p. 70): it is the enormity of the task
undertaken by the collaborators, and arguably
whether the task is successfully completed, that
defines their group as integrative.

After examining the interactions of spontaneous

improvisational groups, Sawyer identified several
key characteristics of successful teams. These
include the ability to build on collaborators ideas
and allow innovation to emerge over time, the
practice of deep listening, the need to recognise
that innovation is inefficient (that not every idea
is a good one), that often surprising questions
emerge, and that innovation is bottom up and
therefore successful improvisational groups often
dont require a leader and can be allowed to selforganise and restructure as necessary.

Keith Sawyer, one of the worlds leading experts

on creativity, views creativity differently from
Vera John-Steiner in that he does not explicitly
state a difference between cooperation and
collaboration in creativity. This suggests that he
sees no distinction between the two. His overall
worldview
of
creativity
is
simplistic:
collaboration is absolutely essential for creativity.
Sawyer asserts that most people believe that
innovation occurs from the creative spark created
by one person. Sawyer contests that this simply
isnt the case; ideas emerge from a creative web
of individuals who all have some part to play in
the generation of the creative spark. Sawyer
describes how many innovations that are
considered to be the product of a single creative
mind are actually the results of collaboration
between seemingly unrelated individuals. For
example, in his book Group Genius (Sawyer,
2007, p. 78), he describes how the esteemed
authors J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis might
never have produced their renowned works of
fiction if they had not evaluated each others
ideas and collaborated with the members of their
Oxford University reading circle. Here we see an
example of the difference in definition of
collaboration by Sawyer and John-Steiner: the
latter would see Tolkien and Lewis as
cooperation partners, rather than collaborators.

Much of Sawyers work focuses on how

creativity
occurs
within
professional
multinational organisations. He believes that
successful companies keep small sparks of
creativity running by temporarily bringing
together individuals from across different
disciplines within an organisation, before taking
any innovations back with them to their
respective departments. He also believes that it is
important that companies separate their
innovation across a number of locations, in effect
raising a spatial boundary between the involved
parties. He cites Weicks claim that loosely
coupled organisations formed from autonomous
building blocks that can be brought together,
disconnected, or re-formed with relatively little
disturbance are more innovative than carefully
planned organisations (cited by Sawyer, 2007, p.
156).

Much of Sawyers work focuses on

improvisational groups. In Group Genius, Sawyer
explains how collaboration between individuals
can often unwittingly lead to the birth of new
insights and global phenomena. Furthermore,

Citing the work of Csikszentmihalyi (1996),

Sawyer describes the need for flow in
improvisational groups. Flow is the name given

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to the state of mind experienced when a creative

individual is at his or her peak, such that they
experience a unified flowing from one moment
to the next, in which we feel in control of our
actions, and in which there is little distinction
between self and environment, between stimulus
and response, or between past, present, and
future (Sawyer, 2007, p. 42). Sawyer recognises
that for an environment to support collaboration,
it must support group flow.

to creativity. However, it seems that JohnSteiners breakdown of collaboration is different

to Fischers because John-Steiners is based on
the nature of interaction between members of a
group whereas Fischers is based upon each
members individual background knowledge.
Much of Gerhard Fischers work into creativity
focuses on the role of collaboration in design
activities. Fischer describes four barriers which
can affect the creativity of groups: Spatial,
Temporal, Conceptual and Technological
barriers.

There is some evidence to suggest that failures

play a role in collaborative creativity. Sawyer
(2007, pg. 109) offers a quote from Linus
Pauling: I am constantly asked by students how I
get good ideas. My answer is simple: First, have a
lot of ideas. Then, throw away the bad ones.
Likewise, Intels director of strategy and
technology, Mary Murphy-Hoye (cited by
LaBarre, 2002), states: If were not failing ten
times more than were succeeding, it means that
were not taking enough risks. This links with
the beliefs of Simonton (1996), who states that
the best bet for producing lasting ideas is to go
for a large quantity of ideas. These statements
correspond with the work of Schank & Neaman
(2001) who believe that In order to succeed, you
must fail. They provide an anecdote from
Michael Jordan who says: Ive failed over and
over and over again in my life and that is why I
succeed.

The Spatial barrier refers to the fact that group

members can be distributed across multiple
locations. This therefore means that participants
are unable to meet face-to-face. Fischer affirms
Brown and Duguids claim that digital
technologies
are
adept
at
maintaining
communities already formed. They are less good
at making them (Fischer, 2004). The main
opportunity is allowing the shift that shared
concerns rather than shared location becomes the
prominent defining feature of a group of people
interacting with each other (Fischer, 2004).
Sawyer observes that collaboration can occur
over time (Sawyer, 2007, p. 99). Fischer
recognises this, and identifies a temporal barrier
to collaboration. This barrier refers to the fact that
acquisition of knowledge takes a considerable
length of time, and design tasks are often realised
over a period of time and can involve many
different individuals. Furthermore, outside
individuals can often shed light on an old
problem, giving fresh insight and opinion which
can lead to the exploration of new creative
pathways.

This view that failure is integral to creativity

contrasts with John-Steiners view that during
distributed collaboration, failures can cause a
group to splinter and disintegrate. However,
sometimes groups are loosely coupled, whereas
an exceptional individual like Michael Jordan is
part of a strong team of basketball players, all of
whom will allow their star player some leeway
for failure.

Fischer believes that it takes a long time to gain

knowledge of a domain: to master as thoroughly
as possible what is already known in a domain
with the ultimate goal being to transcend
conventions, not to succumb to them. Fischer
mainly focuses upon the effect that long term
projects have upon groups. Even an individual
working on a project will change over time and
cannot be considered to have the same skill set at
all points in time.

Gerhard Fischers ideas of collaborative creativity

run in parallel with those of Sawyer. Fischers
manifesto is that The power of the unaided,
individual mind is highly overrated: The
Renaissance scholar no longer exists (Fischer,
2005, p. 128). Akin to John-Steiner and Sawyer,
Fischer believes that group processes are essential

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According to Fischer, the main way of

overcoming the temporal barrier is to save the
rationale behind design decisions. Fischer
attempts to achieve two conflicting goals:
Recording design rationale should not subtract
too many cognitive resources from the task and
assure that rationale is partly formalised so that
computational support is easy to retrieve.

Fischer delineates collaborative groups into

Homogenous Design Communities also known
as Communities of Practice (CoPs) and
Heterogeneous Design Communities also
known as Communities of Interest (CoIs). CoPs
consist of practitioners who work as a
community in a certain domain undertaking
similar work (Fischer, 2004, p. 5). Examples
would include architects, urban planners or
traditional research groups. In comparison a CoI
brings together stakeholders from different CoPs
to solve a particular [design] problem of common
concern (Fischer, 2004, p. 5). An example of
this would be a team of software designers,
marketing
specialists,
psychologists
and
programmers interested in software development.

The Technological barrier is concerned with

making the computer a supporting tool rather than
a hindrance. This should lead to a relationship in
which computers do not emulate human
capabilities but complement them (Fischer,
2004). Fischer claims that design can be
described as a reflective conversation between
designers and the design they create. This is
termed to be back-talk. The main barriers
occur when the back-talk is represented in a
form that users are unable to comprehend or
when the back-talk created by the design situation
itself is insufficient. Domain Oriented Design
Environments (DODEs) attempt to resolve this
issue. The goals for DODEs in supporting
collaboration are to promote interaction with the
problem and not just the computer, and to
increase the back-talk of the situation by
integrating action and reflection into a single
environment.

CoPs are biased toward communicating with the

same people and taking advantage of a shared
background, whereas CoIs have greater potential
for creativity because different backgrounds and
perspectives lead to new insights. This is
supported by Sawyers claim that groups are
effective at generating innovation because they
bring together far more concepts and bodies of
knowledge than any one person can. He states
that group genius can only happen if the brains
in the team dont contain all the same stuff
(Sawyer, 2007, p. 72).
Fischers aim is not to categorise, but rather to
support groups by identifying useful patterns of
practice and helpful technologies. Whilst he
recognises that CoPs and CoIs can change over
time, he hasnt represented this in a formal way.
As Figure 2 demonstrates, the difference between
CoPs and CoIs could be viewed as a continuum
rather than a clear distinction.

Figure 2: the CoP-CoI continuum

Figure 1: A DODE example

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Fischer et al. (2005) propose the use of boundary

objects to aid creativity. Boundary objects are
externalisations that serve to communicate and
coordinate the perspectives of various
constituencies. (Bruner, 1996) claims that
Externalisations produce a record of our mental
efforts, one that is outside us rather than in
memory. An example of a set of boundary
objects would be architectural designs including
blueprints through to prototypical mock-ups of
buildings used by architects, town planners and
clients. Boundary objects are important for two
reasons. Firstly, they serve as externalisations
which
can
then
undergo
innovative
manipulations, as discussed by Oxman (1997).
This is representative of a conversation between a
creator and his or her design (Schn, 1983). This
means that any technology that seeks to support
collaborative tasks must support the process of
externalising knowledge, such that it can then be
re-represented and redesigned.

Fischer has developed a number of tools to

support collaborative creativity. We will now
describe these tools and evaluate them against
both Fischers barriers (spatial, temporal,
technological and conceptual) and the criteria
identified from Sawyers work, namely
conversation, reflection, improvisation and
support of flow. As discussed previously,
evaluating how well a tool supports flow without
watching participants using the tool is impossible.
The final criteria for evaluation of the tools will
be whether the environment allows the user to fail
identified as important by Sawyer among
others.
Having identified the evaluation criteria, it is now
necessary to discuss the tools. Web2gether
(Fischer, 2004) is intended to provide
professional and social support for caregivers.
It is intended to not only allow people to find
resources, but also form social networks. This is
a good example of how to overcome both spatial
and temporal barriers because it brings together
participants from spatially disparate locations and
supports asynchronous communication. However,
we do not consider it an example of collaborative
creativity, rather merely a collaborative
information sharing tool; therefore, Web2gether
cannot be evaluated against our criteria.

The second reason boundary objects are

important is that they allow conversation to occur
between people involved in a design task, even if
those people have different knowledge bases.
Furthermore, Sawyer states that conversation
between people is critical to collaboration. The
spatial and temporal barriers identified by Fischer
may obstruct this conversational process. So, any
solution that attempts to overcome these barriers
must support conversation between the
individuals involved in a design task.
In order to evaluate Fischers work towards
developing collaborative environments, we would
like to use a number of criteria derived from the
work of Sawyer. We have identified a number of
important group processes that must be supported
in order to foster collaborative creativity. These
are the needs for conversation, reflection,
improvisation and the support of flow.
However, as flow is difficult to quantify
(especially without being able to observe
participants at work) it is impossible to
completely evaluate how well each environment
supports group flow.

Figure 3: Web2gether

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The next example is called I-Balls, an application

that helps users to record and investigate design
rationale (Fischer, 2004). I-Balls is designed to
support projects that take place over an extended
period of time. The rationale behind decisions
[should] be recorded in the first place. In this
way the temporal barrier can be overcome
through recording key design decisions. It is also
intended to overcome the conceptual barrier as it
forms a barrier object which can support
communication about not only evolving artifacts
but also background context and rationale about
the artifacts. As the system allows you to
annotate the design in any way necessary it is
assumed that the system does allow you to fail as
an incorrect design can be annotated to describe
the reasoning behind the design. However this
being the case it suggests that the technological
barrier is not overcome as there is no back talk
from the design. Taking Sawyers criteria, the
system clearly allows conversation both with
the design and with the author. The system
supports reflection as the comments made upon
the design need not be statements but could be
questions to be answered after the reflection
period. The authors cannot tell whether the
system provides means for improvisation; on that
basis it is assumed that it does not.

important aspect of using physical objects is that

this allows the conceptual barrier to be overcome
as the boundary objects are clearly perceivable.
However, the spatial and temporal barriers are not
supported as the system requires face-to-face
interaction within a shared construction space.
The system does overcome the technological
barrier as the simulation produces back-talk
which is both sufficient and comprehendible. The
system does allow failure one example given in
(Arias et al., 2000) is planning bus routes. The
system is set up such that the users can construct
the route any way they like subsequently one of
the routes does not take into account any of the
population or business centres. The system
clearly allows conversation with the design.
However, given the co-located nature of the
participants, it is arguable whether the system
supports conversation between users. By
separating out the action space from the reflection
space the system makes a conscious effort to
support reflection. With regards to improvisation,
the system is based around simulations. It
therefore clearly allows users to improvise with
different ideas and test them out without fear of
that becoming the fixed design.

Figure 4: I-Balls
Figure 5: EDC

One of the more complex systems presented by

Fischer is EDC (Arias et al., 2000) (Fischer,
2004). It is intended to be used as a tool for
activities such as transportation planning or flood
mitigation. It consists of an action space whereby
simulations can be run and controlled using
physical objects, and a reflection space where
significant information is presented. The

One of the more controversial environments

Fischer has developed is CodeBroker. The system
monitors what a software developer is currently
doing and infers the problem they are trying to
solve. From this inference, the system delivers
reusable components (Fischer et al., 2005). The
system is only collaborative in as far as the
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components are contributed from several

individuals. This essentially means that the spatial
and temporal barriers are not relevant. With
regards to the conceptual barrier, the code itself
stands as the boundary object. Technologically
the system encourages back-talk as the
component suggested is identified as being
relevant to the task the user is undertaking. Of
course it is questionable whether the system is
capable of performing such a task. If the match is
a trivial one the user can perform the match
themselves. Given the current state of AI research
it is unlikely that anything other than a trivial
match could be made. Likewise, it is questionable
as to whether such a system could allow you to
fail if the task is correctly identified and a
suitable component can be found, the only point
of failure is as to whether the task being
undertaken is the correct one. Likewise there is
no opportunity for improvisation or reflection as
the components are always relevant. Sawyers
only criteria that could be considered to be met is
that of conversation but only so far as the code
listing itself provides a conversation with the
problem.

certain domain (cited in Shneiderman, 1998b, p.

90). This new idea or pattern should also be
accepted by the field in order to be added to the
creative domain. Shneidermans overall aim is to
create a framework to boost the number of quality
creative innovations in all fields of knowledge.
Shneiderman proposes a framework called
Genex. This framework consists of four stages:

Collect: gather information from a certain

domain of knowledge.

Create: devising new ides using

appropriate tools to support creativity.

Consult: refine the idea with other fellows

and practitioners.

Disseminate: distribute that new creation

to the community.

According to Shneiderman, all these stages

should take place on a digital platform. This will
allow exploitation of standardization capabilities
to produce exchangeable data sets which can then
be processed by different applications and
distributed out into the community. Collecting
information is not traditionally seen as a
collaborative process. However, collaboration
from different sources is required to create a
common domain of knowledge. This domain of
knowledge can then be offered to all practitioners
and researchers as a starting point for their
studies. For example, summary chapters present
condensed knowledge, which are ideal starting
points for newcomers to a subject.
After retrieving information from the domain of
knowledge, the creative process starts.
Shneiderman claims that the creation of new
ideas should be an individual process supported
by computerised tools which enable the user to
achieve higher levels of creativity. However,
these new ideas should be refined by
collaborating with close colleagues or mentors.
This stage could also be carried out with the help
of computers. Researchers could post their work
to get reviews from other scientists. In addition,

Figure 6: CodeBroker

Ben Shneiderman does not provide an explicit

definition of collaboration or collaborative
creativity. However, he uses Csikszentmihalyi's
definition of creativity as the foundation for his
work. Csikszentmihalyi defined creativity as the
creation of new ideas or the realisation of an
unknown pattern using the elements found in a
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e-mail, newsgroups and chat rooms could become

a means to collaborate with peers during the
refinement phase. This is a similar idea to
Fischers theoretical work on communities of
interest, where boundary objects are necessary to
overcome the conceptual barrier between diverse
participants.
In addition to proposing the Genex framework,
Shneiderman
also
took
part
in
the
development of some tools supporting his
framework. However, they can only be seen as
separate tools supporting certain phases of the
Genex framework, rather than a complete Genex
environment. The most successful tool is
Lifelines (Plaisant et al, 1996), an environment
for visualising and querying information about a
person or a set of persons throughout time.

Figure 7: LifeLines2
As well as LifeLines, Shneiderman has
participated in other minor projects, the main one
being Shore (Shore2000, 2008). The application
attempted to put in practice the third stage of the
Genex framework (Relate) by asking students
to post their work on a webpage to allow others to
review their work and to propose changes. This
environment was cited in Shneiderman's Genex
paper (Shneiderman, 1998), with the final version
titled `Shore2000. However, a different project
unrelated to Shneiderman has been carrying out
the same idea since 1991. It is called "arXiv"
(arXiv, 2008), and it is an e-Library of scientific
research papers managed by the Cornell
University Library. It holds more than half a
million of papers on Physics, Mathematics and
other sciences, and the number of papers is still
growing.

LifeLines tries to implement the first stage of

Genex ("Collect"), allowing the user to
retrieve information about personal records and
then display it in visual form. This visualisation is
done using a graphic representation of the record
as a set of actions occurring in a timeline.
According to the creators, this visualisation
technique allows the user to identify relationships
between different records that would be hard to
find using plain text. This tool was used to
display records of juvenile cases at the Maryland
Department of Juvenile Justice, receiving positive
feedback from users (Rose et al., 1996).
LifeLines was also used to display medical
records, although no particular feedback was
given by application users.

Although Shneiderman had no part in its

development, Scratch (Monroy-Hernandez, 2008)
can be seen as a Genex environment. This
environment is aimed at children and teenagers of
both sexes to learn, create and share
programmable media using a built-in integrated
development
environment.
Within
this
environment, users can look for previous work by
other users, download it, modify it and then share
it with the community of users to get feedback.

A second version of Lifelines (LifeLines2, 2008)

was released several years later. This version is
still in use (Wang, 2008) and is mainly applied to
the graphical representation of medical records.
The project keeps drawing the attention of the
community and several workshops have been
arranged to present improvements on the
application (June 2004 and May 2008).

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Those works can also be used, if applicable, to

create new ones. This environment is probably
the best example of the Genex framework
because it gives the opportunity to carry out the
frameworks four stages:

Collect: users can search through a

database of more than 50,000 projects.

Create: new projects can be created via a

built-in tool.

Relate: users can ask for help from others.

Donate: once the project it is finished, it

can be distributed and be part of the
domain to be used as a starting point for
new projects or just as inspiration.

Shneidermans Genex framework does not

compare favorably with regards to the criteria
derived from Sawyer. Although it does support
some level of reflection and conversation with a
problem, it does not support synchronous
communication between participants in a task. It
also does little to foster improvisation in a
spontaneous group. Shneidermans relate stage
could support the production of analogies but no
mention of that is made during his work.
Shneiderman also makes no mention of the
barriers identified by Fischer.
Shneiderman initially seems unclear about the
structure of his Genex framework. In his original
work he proposes the need to relate, create and
donate (Shneiderman, 1998a). His view then
changes to the fact that you need to collect,
create, consult and disseminate (Shneiderman,
1998b).
He finally arrives at the need to collect, relate,
create, donate (Shneiderman, 2000) and only at
this stage does he explicate the reasons behind the
evolution of his model. Shneiderman claims that
the reason he altered his framework is because he
sought to combine both papers written in 1998,
citing the need to base his framework on the
close relationship [between] learning and
creativity (Shneiderman, 2000). He describes his
model as a semi-iterative process, whereby an
- 10 -

individual can return to a previous stage at any

time. At this point, his model is further confused
by the introduction of eight activities that can also
occur at any time during the Genex stages.
In 2000, Shneiderman contradicts himself when
criticising the view that problem solving in
creativity [is] portrayed as [the] lonely experience
of wrestling with the problem, breaking through
various blocks and finding clever solutions. This
directly contradicts his previous view that
creativity is a demanding personal journey that
follows diverse paths (Shneiderman, 1998b).
Any thought-process leading to this change of
opinion has not been made explicit in any of his
work.
Shneidermans own view of the creative process
has changed over time alongside his research.
Our main criticism is that he seems more
interested in using alliteration and clever rhymes
to create a snappy title for his manifesto instead
of doing anything that is substantial towards
creating environments that can support
collaboration.
There are many differences between the
researchers definitions and environments.
Fischer and Shneidermans views on the
collaborative process are wildly different: Fischer
sees collaboration as central to the creative
process whereas Shneiderman considers the
creative process to be a demanding personal
journey
that
follows
diverse
paths
(Shneiderman, 1998b).
There is a general acceptance that collaboration is
key to creativity. However, there is still
disagreement over the definition of collaboration
in creativity. Unlike Sawyer and Fischer, JohnSteiner makes a distinction between cooperation
and collaboration. Fischers view of collaboration
is that people must directly contribute to a task,
whereas Sawyer and Shneiderman consider any
kind of outside influence as collaboration. In
contrast, John-Steiner feels that joint ownership
of a group effort is a fundamental element of
collaboration.

Generally, the researchers have formed a strong

theoretical understanding of how to support
collaborative creativity, in terms of the processes
that need to be supported in order to optimise the
output of a creative group. However, their efforts
towards developing these environments have
been adequate but far from excellent. For
example, Fischers environments provide good
support for creative processes, overcome barriers
and allow participants to fail, but do not facilitate
support for these to occur at the same time. Thus,
there is potential for the research to be applied in
more effective forms to create successful tools.
Currently, the environments described in this
paper do not exist outside of the research
community. These tools will never succeed unless
they fit with existing practices or offer an
advantage over these practices that make change
worthwhile. The environments detailed in this
paper were only used by practitioners when they
were encouraged to do so. Once the research
ended, the use of the tools diminished.
With reference to Shneiderman, conceptually it is
still unclear what a Genex is capable of. Our
evaluation of Shneiderman is based upon our
vague idea of what a Genex is, which may or may
not correspond to Shneidermans understanding
of the model. Shneiderman states that Thesauri
are to words what Genexes will be to ideas
(Shneiderman, 1998b). The problem with this is
that words are well-defined and are easy to
collect because, in a language, there are a finite
number of words. Likewise, words have a fixed
interpretation, whereas ideas are transient.
Sawyer states that ideas must be left open to
multiple interpretations they should be
equivocal.
Creating a central store of knowledge is
problematic. Sawyer (Sawyer, 2007, p. 144)
describes how a number of professional
companies created databases trying to capture and
centralize the collective knowledge of their
professional staff. The goal was to inspire
innovation by helping people make connections,
but all of the firms discovered that these
databases were useless at facilitating innovation.
Sawyer states that databases are of little use with
- 11 -

problem-finding creativity and when no-one

knows what the problem is or what question to
ask, databases cant help (Sawyer, 2007, p. 145).
Secondly, computers cant tolerate indirectness.
Therefore, if a Genex is to be successful, it needs
to be able to suggest the question. The concept
of Genex seems to be more about creating
something that is good enough or best fit rather
than something that is truly creative.
Environments designed to support collaborative
creativity can only support the development of an
idea that already exists they cannot directly
suggest new ideas, but can sometimes help a user
discover new ones, as shown by Fischers ECD
environment.
We have argued that failure is critical to
developing creative ideas and any environment
that supports collaborative creativity must allow
for failures. This is because failing multiple times
assists the refinement of a creative solution and
failure helps you to see where you went wrong
and allows you to redefine your approach to a
problem.
John-Steiner
argues
that
the
collaborative team itself must be structured so
that failure does not cause the dissolution of the
group. Its not the act of failing that is important
but the acceptance of the failure and the ability to
reflect upon why the failure occurred. Therefore,
if an environment allows you to fail, it is also
supporting the redefinition of a question and
therefore the overall creative process.
John Donne said no man is an island, and
whilst the work of John-Steiner, Sawyer and
Fischer do not agree on a single definition of
collaborative creativity the acceptance of
collaboration as key to creative output is mutually
held.
There is still much work to be done towards the
development of environments that support
collaboration and collaborative creativity. If
collaboration is truly an integral part of creativity,
the need to develop environments that support
this process will only increase. The challenge lies
in building environments that effectively support
all of the processes necessary for collaborative
creativity.

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