Colloquium - Herrmann

Creativity support for university courses or research meetings has to take into account technical as well as organizational issues. From the technical viewpoint we try to improve co-located meeting support on the basis of large interactive screens with respect to usability and functionality. Therefore we have established the Modlab (moderation lab) at Bochum which includes a seamless interactive display (4,8m * 1,4 m). While large interactive screens are feasible to represent a large number of contributions in the phase of divergent ideation, difficulties arise when convergence of collected ideas has to be promoted. We have derived design heuristics to tackle this problem from a series of interviews as well as from our own practice. The technical support has to be embedded into an organizational framework, which refers to phases of creativity, facilitation methods and distribution of roles.

Thomas Herrmann is a professor of Information and Technology-Management at the Institute of Applied Work Science (IAW), University of Bochum, Germany. Current research interests include design methods for socio-technical systems in the areas of knowledge management, (work-) process management, computer supported collaborative learning, and concepts of social software for the support of creativity. He teaches courses in Groupware, Knowledge Management, Socio-Technical Systems Design, Information Systems and Privacy, Human-Computer Interaction, Organizational Communication, and Process Management.

Sponsored by the Center for Lifelong Learning & Design.