A New Generation Wiki for Supporting a Research Community in Creativity and IT

Fischer, Gerhard
University of Colorado

The proposed research will create environments that go beyond existing Wikis (being primarily focused on hypertext) to permit the integration (not just attachment) of other forms of media ranging from movies and animations, to sharing of datasets, to the creation and utilization of social network information to support community interaction, to conceptual mind-mapping media.

The proposed research will

examine how current wiki-like environments are limited in supporting the different ways in which creative people might represent and contribute to a body of knowledge and study what other types of objects, context and interfaces (beyond hyperlinked text) would be desirable, usable, and useful;
analyze and create specifically the following entities: mind maps, videos, anecdotes/stories and how these could be designed to allow them to be readily and rapidly developed and extended by participants;
explore different (potentially intertwined) “modes” interacting with such an environment (including: face-to-face activities, synchronous, and asynchronous activities); and
utilize new paradigms (such as the emerging Web 2.0 framework) for developing systems that are open and extensible, permitting the inclusion of new forms of information and representation within the community memory.

The socio-technical environment developed will have the potential for broad impact by supporting creative communities, which are a critical resource for the competitive ability of the US workforce. The effort to create a community around the CreativeIT Initiative within CISE provides an opportunity to study the use of community-building creativity-support tools for a community where support for development and sharing of creative ideas is critical.