本文发表于《Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology》，二零二四年第四期。
原标题：Searching for creativity: How people search to generate new ideas
作 者：Catherine Chavula, Yujin Choi, Soo Young Rieh
摘 要：创造力是人们在各种学术、工作和日常生活环境中的关键技能之一。寻找信息对创作过程至关重要。尽管最近人们对信息搜索的研究越来越关注创造性任务，但人们对如何搜索信息以产生新颖有用的想法仍然知之甚少。本研究旨在解决三个关键的研究问题：（1）人们在完成创造性任务时会参与什么搜索过程，（2）在搜索产生想法时会采用什么创造性思维策略，以及（3）人们在搜索创造性任务时遇到什么挑战。这些数据是在美国一所大学使用多种方法收集的，包括任务前访谈、涉及产生新想法的搜索会议和任务后访谈。根据31次访谈和搜索会议的数据分析，我们提出了一个概念框架，用于在学术和日常搜索环境中搜索创造性任务的信息。我们的发现强调了探索是一种重要的搜索活动，当搜索产生想法时。这项研究的结果增强了我们对搜索活动与创造性思维策略之间关系的理解。
Creativity is one of the critical skills for people in a variety of academic, work, and everyday life contexts. Searching for information is essential to the creative process. Despite the recent increased attention in research on information searching for creative tasks, there is still little understanding of how people search for information to generate novel and useful ideas. This study aims to address three key research questions: (1) What search processes do people engage in while completing creative tasks, (2) what creative thinking strategies are employed when searching to generate ideas, and (3) what challenges do people encounter while searching for creative tasks. The data were collected at a university in the United States using multiple methods, combining pre-task interviews, search sessions that involved the generation of new ideas, and post-task interviews. Drawing from the data analysis from 31 interviews and search sessions, we present a conceptual framework for information searching for creative tasks across academic and everyday search contexts. Our findings highlight exploration as a critical search activity when searching to generate ideas. The results of this study enhance our understanding of the relationship between search activities and creative thinking strategies.
