Computational Creativity Support:
Using Algorithms and Machine Learning to Help People Be More Creative
...a one-day workshop at CHI 2009...
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
Boston, MA, USA
Submission to the workshop is closed, and we will be contacting authors on or before November 28th.
http://computationalcreativity.org
For more information: info@computationalcreativity.org
Who are the organizers?
Dan Morris, Microsoft Research Computational User Experiences Group
Jimmy Secretan, University of Central Florida Machine Learning Lab
What is the workshop about? |
![]() |
Amateurs and professionals in a variety of artistic disciplines use computers every day to support their creative processes. Musicians record to digital studios, photographers process digital images, visual and industrial designers explore prototypes digitally, and writers depend on computer systems to create and distribute their artistic output.
Although these existing systems are powerful and widely used, recent advances in signal processing, natural language processing, and machine learning will offer unprecedented expansion of the capabilities of creativity support tools. Computational techniques will allow even novice users to explore new creative disciplines, to leverage existing media in the creation of new media, and to harness the power of the online community to conduct massively collaborative creative projects.
The one-day workshop described here will bring together participants from diverse backgrounds in the HCI, design, art, machine-learning, and algorithms communities to facilitate the advancement of novel creativity support tools.
What are the goals of the workshop? |
![]() |
Identify potential collaborations between the diverse communities represented here, with a particular emphasis on bringing together members of the HCI/design communities with members of the signal-processing/machine-learning/algorithms communities.
Discuss the tools and methodologies that each of these diverse communities can contribute to the larger goal of enabling end-user creativity.
Discuss the implementation and evaluation challenges facing the development of novel creativity support tools.
When you say “Creativity Support Tools”, what creative disciplines do you mean? |
![]() |
We welcome contributions that pertain to all artistic disciplines, including music, visual art, literature, photography, sculpture, industrial design, etc. We are particularly interested in identifying approaches, challenges, and tools that are common to multiple disciplines, and building a vocabulary and methodology that will contribute to the entire field of creativity support.
Who should submit to this workshop? |
![]() |
As described above, this workshop is intended to bring together participants from multiple communities who share an interest in creativity support. Participation is encouraged even if authors have not previously published in the creativity-support domain. For example, contributions may come from designers whose methodologies may be appropriate for creativity tool development, from machine learning researchers working on algorithms that apply to creative media processing, from artists seeking to expand their set of tools, or from usability experts with insights that may apply to the evaluation of creativity support systems.
What's going to happen at the workshop? |
![]() |
After initial introductions, small-group brainstorming activities will be the primary tool through which this workshop addresses the goals described above. Participants will assemble into multidisciplinary teams to produce sketches or mockups of creativity support tools that leverage algorithmic techniques, which will be shared with the larger group later in the day.
The workshop will conclude with targeted, group-wide discussion of challenges and resources that are common to all areas of creativity support, such as evaluation of creativity support tools, relevant implementation resources, sources of funding, publication venues, and existing demonstrations or commercial products that can serve as guiding examples.
Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to present forward-looking concepts that require complementary skill sets to pursue further. For example, a discussion might be seeded by a description of a relevant algorithmic technique that requires user-experience-design expertise to develop into an interactive tool, or a vision of an end-user experience that can be realized with data-processing or machine-learning techniques which may outside of the presenter’s expertise.
Sounds like fun... how do I submit to “Computational Creativity Support 2009”? |
![]() |
Important dates
Submission deadline: October 30, 2008
Notification of acceptance: November 28, 2008
Final camera-ready submissions: January 12, 2009
Workshop: April 4, 2009
Submission
If you’re interested in participating, you should submit a position paper in the HCI archive format. Position papers should be a maximum of four pages long, and we encourage you to include multimedia components in your submission. Submissions should be e-mailed to info@computationalcreativity.org, and we appreciate the submission of large multimedia components as links. The reviewing process will not be anonymous, so please include your contact information as specified in the HCI archive format.
Position papers are encouraged to discuss:
The authors’ background or interests with respect to creativity support. We encourage submissions form participants who have not published in this area before, in which case you are encouraged to discuss the tools, methodologies, or experiences that will allow you to contribute to this workshop.
Questions you’d like to pose to members of complementary disciplines. For example, we hope to allow contributors from a primarily-algorithmic background to understand the methodologies that might allow an algorithmic tool to support a complete user experience, and we hope to allow contributors from a user-interface background to discover tools that will fill gaps in computational support for user-experience concepts in the creativity support domain.
Specific ideas for projects that would be appropriate for discussion. We encourage the submission of your visions for creativity support tools on which you’d like feedback or collaboration from participants in other communities. Sketches or text descriptions are equally welcome.
Specific activities or topics that you think would be appropriate to include in the session program. The organizers are planning out a schedule for the day, but are open to any creative ideas that will help make this workshop a great experience for participants.
What happens if my submission is accepted? |
![]() |
We’ll be notifying authors of acceptance on November 28th, and will require final position-paper submissions on or before November 28th. Authors will be expected to prepare a 3-minute presentation about their own work, and a 5-minute discussion-stimulating presentation about opportunities they see in creativity support and challenge or questions they’d like to pose to the community.
What does the workshop cost? |
Presenters will be required to register for the workshop and for at least one day of the CHI conference. Registration fees are not yet set, and are not determined by the workshop organizers. More information about the registration process and costs is available on the CHI 2009 Workshops FAQ.








