The goal of our research is to develop computer systems that support designers’ collective creativity; such systems support individual creative aspects in design through the use of representations created by others in the community. We have developed two systems, IAM-eMMa and EVIDII, that both aim at supporting designers in finding visual images that would be useful for their creative design task. IAMeMMa uses knowledge-based rules, which are constructed by other designers, to retrieve images related to a design task and infers the underlying “rationale” when a designer chooses one of the images. EVIDII allows designers to associate affective words and images, and then shows several visual representations of the relationships among designers, images and words. By observing designers interacting with the two systems, we have identified that systems for supporting collective creativity need to be based on design knowledge that (1) is contextualized, (2) is respectable and trustful, and (3) enables “appropriation” of a design task.
['Kumiyo Nakakoji', 'Y. Yamamoto', 'Masao Ohira']
A framework that supports collective creativity in design using visual images