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Semantically Far Inspirations Considered Harmful?: Accounting for Cognitive States in Collaborative Ideation

Authors:

Pao Siangliulue,

Denisa Qori McDonald,

Reza Moradinezhad,

Erin T. Solovey,

Krzysztof Z. Gajos,

Steven P. DowAuthors Info & Claims

C&C '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition

Pages 93 - 105

https://doi.org/10.1145/3059454.3059455

Published: 22 June 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Collaborative ideation systems can help people generate more creative ideas by exposing them to ideas different from their own. However, there are competing theoretical views on whether and when such exposure is helpful. Associationist theory suggests that exposing ideators to ideas that are semantically far from their own maximizes novel combinations of ideas. In contrast, SIAM theory cautions that systems should offer far ideas only when ideators reach an impasse (a cognitive state in which they have exhausted ideas within a particular category), and offer near ideas during productive ideation (a cognitive state in which they are actively exploring ideas within a category), which maximizes exploration within categories. Our research compares these theoretical recommendations. In an online experiment, 245 participants generated ideas for a themed wedding; we detected and validated participants' cognitive states using a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging data. Receiving far ideas during productive ideation resulted in slower ideation and less within-category exploration, without significant benefits for novelty, compared to receiving no inspirations. Participants were also more likely to hit an impasse when receiving far ideas during productive ideation. These findings suggest that far inspirational ideas can harm creativity if received during productive ideation.

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Delle Monache SMoleman ROzcan E(2024)Soundstorm, a collaborative ideation game for sound-driven designProceedings of the 19th International Audio Mostly Conference: Explorations in Sonic Cultures10.1145/3678299.3678348(479-486)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2024
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Ding Z(2024)Advancing GUI for Generative AI: Charting the Design Space of Human-AI Interactions through Task Creativity and ComplexityCompanion Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640544.3645241(140-143)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
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Index Terms

Semantically Far Inspirations Considered Harmful?: Accounting for Cognitive States in Collaborative Ideation
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

C&C '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition

June 2017

584 pages

ISBN:9781450344036

DOI:10.1145/3059454

General Chairs:
David A. Shamma
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
,
Jude Yew
National University of Singapore
,
Program Chair:
Brian Bailey
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 22 June 2017

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National Science Foundation

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C&C '17

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SIGCHI

C&C '17: Creativity and Cognition

June 27 - 30, 2017

Singapore, Singapore

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C&C '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 27 of 94 submissions, 29%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 371 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02463-8
Delle Monache SMoleman ROzcan E(2024)Soundstorm, a collaborative ideation game for sound-driven designProceedings of the 19th International Audio Mostly Conference: Explorations in Sonic Cultures10.1145/3678299.3678348(479-486)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678299.3678348
Ding Z(2024)Advancing GUI for Generative AI: Charting the Design Space of Human-AI Interactions through Task Creativity and ComplexityCompanion Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640544.3645241(140-143)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640544.3645241
Yen YE JJin HLi MLin GPan IDow S(2024)ProcessGallery: Contrasting Early and Late Iterations for Design Principle LearningProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373898:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
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Xu XPalani SMunkhbat ALee TDow S(2024)Idea-Centric Search: Four Patterns of Information Seeking During Creative IdeationProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656193(280-291)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
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Rayan JKanetkar DGong YYang YPalani SXia HDow S(2024)Exploring the Potential for Generative AI-based Conversational Cues for Real-Time Collaborative IdeationProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656184(117-131)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
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Maiden NZachos KLockerbie JBrown ASteele SWolf A(2024)Designing digital tools for creative thinking: a case study from elite sports coachingExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3637146(1-11)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Bako HLiu XKo GSong HBattle LLiu Z(2024)Unveiling How Examples Shape Visualization Design OutcomesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2024.345640731:1(1137-1147)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2024
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Ding ZSrinivasan AMacneil SChan J(2023)Fluid Transformers and Creative Analogies: Exploring Large Language Models’ Capacity for Augmenting Cross-Domain Analogical CreativityProceedings of the 15th Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3591196.3593516(489-505)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
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