Ian Gwilt

Perspectives on design creativity and innovation research

The aim of this extended editorial is to offer a perspective on design creativity and innovation research on the occasion of launching the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation. Thirty six members of the editorial board present their expectations, views, or opinions on the topics of the journal. All of these articles are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, summaries of the 36 articles are consolidated. This editorial also analyzes keywords from each of the articles, and the results are visualized in Section 4. The keyword analysis covers not only those words taken directly from each of the articles but also the implicit keywords that are suggested by the explicit ones. We believe this extended editorial will help the researchers, in particular young researchers, comprehend the essence of design creativity and innovation research and obtain a clue to tackle the new discipline.The aim of this extended editorial is to offer a perspective on design creativity and innovation research on the occasion of launching the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation. Thirty six members of the editorial board present their expectations, views, or opinions on the topics of the journal. All of these articles are presented in Section 2. In Section 3, summaries of the 36 articles are consolidated. This editorial also analyzes keywords from each of the articles, and the results are visualized in Section 4. The keyword analysis covers not only those words taken directly from each of the articles but also the implicit keywords that are suggested by the explicit ones. We believe this extended editorial will help the researchers, in particular young researchers, comprehend the essence of design creativity and innovation research and obtain a clue to tackle the new discipline.

Augmented Reality and Mobile Art

The combined notions of augmented-reality (AR) and mobile art are based on the amalgamation of a number of enabling technologies including computer imaging, emergent display and tracking systems and the increased computing-power in hand-held devices such as Tablet PCs, smart phones, or personal digital assistants (PDAs) which have been utilized in the making of works of art. There is much published research on the technical aspects of AR and the ongoing work being undertaken in the development of faster more efficient AR systems [1] [2]. In this text I intend to concentrate on how AR and its associated typologies can be applied in the context of new media art practices, with particular reference to its application on hand-held or mobile devices.

Assessing Graphical Robot Aids for Interactive Co-working

The shift towards more collaborative working between humans and robots increases the need for improved interfaces. Alongside robust measures to ensure safety and task performance, humans need to gain the confidence in robot co-operators to enable true collaboration. This research investigates how graphical signage can support human–robot co-working, with the intention of increased productivity. Participants are required to co-work with a KUKA iiwa lightweight manipulator on a manufacturing task. The three conditions in the experiment differ in the signage presented to the participants—signage relevant to the task, irrelevant to the task, or no signage. A change between three conditions is expected in anxiety and negative attitudes towards robots; error rate; response time; and participants’ complacency, suggested by facial expressions. In addition to understanding how graphical languages can support human–robot co-working, this study provides a basis for further collaborative research to explore human–robot co-working in more detail.

Dynamic Graphical Signage Improves Response Time and Decreases Negative Attitudes Towards Robots in Human-Robot Co-working

Collaborative robots, or ‘co-bots’, are a transformational technology that bridge traditionally segregated manual and automated manufacturing processes. However, to realize its full potential, human operators need confidence in robotic co-worker technologies and their capabilities. In this experiment we investigate the impact of screen-based dynamic instructional signage on 39 participants from a manufacturing assembly line. The results provide evidence that dynamic signage helps to improve response time for the experimental group with task-relevant signage compared to the control group with no signage. Furthermore, the experimental group’s negative attitudes towards robots decreased significantly with increasing accuracy on the task.

Flying with data: Openness, forms and understanding.

Abstract: There is a concerted effort to make available large amounts of public and open data. This paper explores this much-vaulted idea in terms of how easy or difficult it might be to find and access this data, and how a non-specialist audience is able to read, comprehend and make sense of complex digital data in its conventional form. Following a discussion that introduces the concept of the datadriven physical object (the data-object), and the current issues pertaining to the access and use of open data, the paper traces the journey of two design researchers through the activity of locating and using publicly available healthcare statistics as source content for developing this new form of data interpretation. The documented ‘dataseeds’ case study suggests that making data publically available is only the first step in thinking about how digital data can be accessed and shared in meaningful ways by a range of different audiences.

Augmented Reality Graffiti and Street Art

This chapter looks at how the concept of Augmented Reality graffiti enables us to experience an expanded view of the urban environment. It examines how the intersection between graffiti, street art and AR provides us with a complex socially and technologically encoded interface, which has the potential to combine the first-hand experience of public space with digital media, and creative practices, in a hybrid composition. The chapter begins by looking at the tradition of graffiti and street art; this is followed by a discussion around the philosophical implications for digitally augmented graffiti. A number of key techniques and technologies are then explored through the use of two practice-based case studies.

Graphical User Interface in Art

This essay discusses the use of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) as a site of creative practice. By creatively repositioning the GUI as a work of art it is possible to challenge our understanding and expectations of the conventional computer interface wherein the icons and navigational architecture of the GUI no longer function as a technological tool. These artistic recontextualizations are often used to question our engagement with technology and to highlight the pivotal place that the domestic computer has taken in our everyday social, cultural and (increasingly), creative domains. Through these works the media specificity of the screen-based GUI can broken by dramatic changes in scale, form and configuration. This can be seen through the work of new media artists who have re-imagined the GUI in a number of creative forms both, within the digital, as image, animation, net and interactive art, and in the analogue, as print, painting, sculpture, installation and performative event. Furthermore as a creative work, the GUI can also be utilized as a visual way-finder to explore the relationship between the dynamic potentials of the digital and the concretized qualities of the material artifact.

Digital Art: a brief history of the graphical user interface in contemporary art practice, 1994-2004

This paper explores the use of the graphical user interface (GUI) in contemporary art practice and examine how the cultural ubiquity of digital computing has allowed the GUI to become an interesting source of creative content. It trace examples where the visual aesthetic of the computer interface has been referenced within 2D media: paintings, digital prints, Web art and the gaming interface.