Making All Voices Heard: Increasing Social Creativity in Design by Exploiting the Simmetry of Ignorance

Abstract

The power of the unaided individual mind is highly overrated. Much human creativity is social, arising from activities that take place in a social context in which interaction with other people and the artifacts that embody collective knowledge are essential contributors. Social creativity is not a luxury but a necessity to address the problems faced by societies in the 21st century. Our research has focused specifically on complex design problems requiring the contributions of many stakeholders. We have developed socio-technical environments supporting these objectives in the specific contexts of urban planning, collaborative learning, and collaborative software design. This paper concludes with a brief description of research directions and activities in the USA related to these aspects of creativity.