Performing a creative task can be thought of as an intentional exploration of the relevant design space—with numerous parameters to test and tune. For novices, it can be intimidating to navigate this vast and ill-defined space in search of a single instance to call their final design. Experts, on the other hand, become practiced navigators of this space, even gradually picking out a smaller subspace that they identify as their “personal style.” Consequently the process of learning, or developing “expertise” in a creative domain, can also be thought of as training their ability to leverage design principles and experience to guide this exploration. In my work, we ask: How might creative tools leverage expert structures to help novices develop this expert-like “artistic vision”? Specifically, we propose new camera interfaces for photography that provide scaffolding through visual representations of various photography concepts. Similarly, my research investigates how tools might guide novices to learn and perform visual design like experts by embedding principled feedback.
Jane E is Postdoc at The Design Lab at UCSD under the guidance of mentors Steven Dow and Haijun Xia. She is a part of the debut cohort of UCSD’s Computer Science and Engineering’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Jane earned her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University, where she was co-advised by James Landay and Pat Hanrahan. Her research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and computer graphics with a focus on designing tools to support creativity, especially for non-expert creators. She is grateful to have been supported by grants from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, Hasso Plattner Institute, and Microsoft Research. Jane received her BSE from Princeton University in 2012.