Supporting Creativity in Distributed Scientific Communities

Abstract

We are interested in supporting creativity in distributed scientific communities through socio-technical interventions. Based on a synthetic literature analysis of creativity and collaborative groups, we present and justify three requirements for supporting creativity: support for divergent and convergent thinking, development of shared objectives, and reflexivity. We discuss our collaboratory prototype and its existing functionality to support creativity. We propose three design implications to support creativity in CSCW: integrate support for individual, dyadic, and group brainstorming, leverage cognitive conflict by preserving and reflecting on minority dissent, and support flexibility in granularity of planning.