James Thomas Brady

A Theory of Productivity in the Creative Process

In the early 1980s, large computing systems became capable of supporting response times of 300 ms for transactions consisting of 500,000 instructions. In interactive environments this produced an unexpectedly large (±100 percent) increase in the productivity of scientists, engineers, and programmers. An investigation of the findings by cognitive researchers led to a reconciliation of the productivity improvement and response time. This article examines the implications of this, and suggests several strategies for further productivity improvements. Cognitive research models are augmented with additional theory to develop an analytic model of interaction between the problem-solver and the computational system. This analytic model predicts that improvements in system response time and data entry technology can produce even greater gains in productivity.