What Counts as 'Creative' Work? Articulating Four Epistemic Positions in Creativity-Oriented HCI Research

This paper examines prevailing understandings of creativity in creative computing research through the lens of feminist epistemology. We analyze “creativity support” as a construct that encodes different definitions of creative work. Drawing on existing literature and practices, the paper surfaces four views about creative work that underpin current creative technologies and HCI research: problem-solving, cognitive emergence, embodied action, and tool-mediated expert activity. Each view makes different claims about the role of computing in creative work and the creative subject assumed. We articulate the attendant politics of each view and illustrate how critical feminist epistemology can serve as an analytical tool to reason about the trade-offs of various creativity definitions. The paper concludes with recommendations for integrating feminist values into creativity-oriented HCI research.