Special Assignment: Dr. Celine Latulipe

Reference Information

Title: Building and Evaluating Creative Interaction
Authors: Fabian Hemmert, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Berlin,  Germany
Presentation Venue: CSCE 681 Open Graduate Seminar, Texas A&M University
Date: February 2, 2011;
Location: College Station, Texas, U.S.A.

Abstract

Visionaries in Computer Science have long seen the computer as a tool to augment our intellect. However, while it is relatively straightforward to measure the impact of a tool or technique on task efficiency for well-defined tasks, it is much more difficult to measure computers' impact on higher-level cognitive processes, such as creative processes. In my own research in Human-Computer Interaction, I create novel interaction techniques, but run up against the problem of trying to demonstrate how these tools positively impact higher-level processes such as creativity, expressiveness and exploration. In this talk, I first present a variety of interaction techniques that I have developed, and I then describe a new survey metric, the Creativity Support Index (CSI), that we have developed to help researchers and designers evaluate the level of creativity support provided by various systems, tools or interfaces. I will discuss what has been learned during the process of creating this survey and its usage in three different studies. The Creativity Support Index is one of the very first indices to support any evaluation of a computer system's impact on higher-level cognitive work. I will discuss the CSI within the context of my longer term goal to develop a suite of tools (including biometric tools) that provide both stronger analytical power, and a fundamental framework for evaluating computational support for creative activities, engagement and aesthetic experience.

Biography

Dr. Celine Latulipe has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada. She is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Latulipe has long been fascinated by two-handed interaction in the real world, and the absence of it in the human-computer interface. She has developed numerous individual and collaborative two-handed interaction techniques and these have blossomed into an exploration of creative expression. Dr. Latulipe works on projects with choreographers, dancers, artists and theatre producers to better understand creative work in practice and how technology may play a role in supporting and evaluating creative work practices. Currently, Dr. Latulipe is working on the Dance.Draw project, funded by an NSF CreativeIT grant.

Summary

In this presentation. Dr. Latulipe started talking about her area of research, and how she got interested in two-handed interaction. She has been focused on two-handed interaction rather than one-handed interaction since her Ph.D. years. She developed early bimanual techniques, in particular in two applications: SymDraw and SymTone which was done during her Ph.D. . She demoed SymTone which uses two gyroscopic mices. By using two mices she has found a way to merge tasks to edit images that would normally be found in seperate areas like in Photoshop. She demonstrated the Lens technique, Tone Zone technique, Ken Burns technique, and another one. (Ken Burns is a director known for his evocative emotional effects in his films.)



She then talked about the traditional approach in HCI that evaluates the usefulness of a system by asking users for feedback and doing case studies. However, in her application (A photo editing tool), she mentionned the difficulty of evaluatint a user's response. When people edit their images and choose a setting by mistake, sometimes their creativity is sparked by the mistakes they make. From her experience, users see errors as oppurtunities.

She then talked about  some of her other projects like Touch painting, and Sound painting. She presented a video that demoed these two projects. She suggested the possibility of her image exploration technique being used in a medical application.

She also talked about her involvement in Interactice Collaboratice Art. She is involved in a project called "Dance.Draw". The main thing that project explores is how to sense a dancer's movement, and then use that data as input to create real time projections.
One problem she talked about is that dancers are unpredictable in their movements, which increases the difficulty of tracking movement. Dr. Latulipe is also interested in finding a way to measure audience engagement, as well as measuring the usefulness of her project to dancers themselves.
How do we know if our tol is supporting their creativity?
This question led into the crux of her talk which dealt with finding a way of evaluating creativity.
Based on the NASA Task Load Index(TLX) that is used a lot in HCI, she created a Creativity Support Index. In addition, she has also incorporated into her research biometric devices. In a user study, she studied an audience's arousal when watching a creative work (i.e. a play). She has found that her data collection can establish the relation between audience engament, and a performance.

Discussion

This talk was interesting, and I enjoyed Dr. Latulipe's live demos and videos. That is much more useful than reading a research paper on the topic. Dr. Latulipe hopes her Creativity Support Index will be robust enough to become a standard tool to use for evalutating peoples' arousal, and what they like or dislike while using a system. Some of the audience had suggestions about areas she could explore, but sometimes, there was concern on how to measure creativity, and engagement in an activity. The issue of creativity is quite broad.

(For those who would like to see a similar presentation she did, you will find below a link to the same talk presented at Georgia Tech)

Building and Evaluating Creative Interaction (courtesy: Georgia Tech)