PI: Professor Larry Leifer

Abstract

Current IT development approaches rely on traditional engineering philosophies and methods which deploy structured procedures and formal approaches to ensure validity of results. Unfortunately, this formal approach to IT development fails to support exploration and discovery of unexpected issues and new opportunities. The goal of this project is to introduce a wider range of media, especially tangible media, to IT development in order to foster innovation. In order for software designers to produce innovative work, generative media and methods that promote innovative behaviors and thinking must be enlisted, particularly in the early stages of development where requirements and architectures are determined.

Generative media can speed development and reduce risk by allowing developers to create a shared understanding and produce new insights. It is our intention to map the IT development tool space to find promising opportunities for adding generative, tangible media to current IT and software tool sets. We believe that a meaningful vision about the role of media in IT will emerge from careful consideration of real problems through systematic collaboration with IT experts. We propose a methodology that integrates collaboration and exploration between researchers and domain experts to develop new and generative media for early stage IT development.