Creative genius, like any other type of greatness in humans, is rare and has always been considered so. But the ability to discover or make something new—creativity—and to apply that novelty—innovation—is now assumed to be widely accessible and teachable. Software tools to support these activities are increasingly important, and this article draws from Shneiderman’s wide experience in order to review theoretical frameworks for creativity and to suggest some approaches to research for developers of the needed tools.

Shneiderman identifies three schools of thought regarding creativity: structuralists, who emphasize method and process; inspirationalists, who emphasize stepping out of traditional approaches to seek the moment of creative inspiration laterally; and situationalists, who emphasize the importance of relationships and interaction. Each of these perspectives can and should influence the development of software tools to support creativity and innovation. There can be standard patterns of work and support for following the patterns, but these can be augmented by the inclusion of more serendipitous techniques and by components that facilitate interaction with collaborators.

These considerations result in a set of proposed design principles for creativity support tools: support exploratory research; enable collaboration; provide rich history keeping; and design with low thresholds, high ceilings, and wide walls (that is, make tools easily accessible to beginners, but with capabilities for experts, possibly through several layers of complexity and power). The article is augmented with two lengthy sidebars by other authors that elaborate on the ideas by addressing “sustaining social creativity” and “new media arts and the future of technologies.”

This article, which is easily accessible to a wide audience, is a stimulating and encouraging perspective on the development of an important category of applications. There is an extensive reading list of 32 items, including the references in the sidebars, for those who wish to learn more about ongoing research activities.