The STOIC project is an ongoing collaboration between Catherine Menon and Austen Rainer that is investigating the similarities, differences and mutual benefits of "story thinking" and "computational thinking". Indicative research questions are:
- How do software engineers and writers think as they work on and with their respective artefacts, and what might software engineers and writers learn from each other? For example, we’ve taken a technique from safety software engineering and applied that technique in two recent workshops, one with professional writers and one with emerging writers, as they "workshop" each others' stories, in groups.
- What are the mental models used by writers and software engineers, and how do those relate and contrast, and how do they affect, and are affected by, modes of thinking? For example, we’ve begun to explore (here) how computational models “de-mean” stories, using a very simple and well-known six word story ("For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.") as well as two "stories" from computer science. Looking ahead, we want to investigate whether and how stories might help software engineers develop software in a more responsible way, for example, using larger stories, such as memoirs.
- How is language used by writers and software engineers, and how does that language affect, and is affected by, by models of thinking and respective mental models?
- To what extent do existing concepts of story in software engineering, such as the user story and the scenario, "satisfy" the criteria for a story (in the fuller sense of the word "story")? Related to this, we are investigating the extent to which software engineering has grounded its concepts of story in the narrative disciplines. One potential criterion for assessing a 'true/r' story is the respective text's ability to transport the reader into a story world.
We begin to sketch the relationship between the two modes of thinking, using the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel.
We’ve taken a technique from safety software engineering, HAZOP, revised it, and then applied it in two recent workshops, one with professional writers and one with emerging writers, as they "workshop" each others' stories, in groups.
A summary of Creative HAZOP (CHAZOP) is available here.
As with CHAZOP, we’ve taken a technique from safety software engineering and revised it to create EHAZOP.
A summary of Ethical HAZOP (EHAZOP) is available here.
Project-of-concept pilot studies were conducted for CHAZOP. Further information is here.
we have an ongoing programme of work, comprising multiple projects, that investigates the contribution of memoir to software engineering.
Further information is available here.
Ethical co-creativity with AI: A hands-on workshop at the International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2024)
We're planning to work with computational creatives at a one-day workshop. Details are here.
This hands-on workshop explores how software engineering techniques used to develop AI systems can be translated into creative practice to support and facilitate human - AI co-creativity. The workshop introduces participants to techniques for identifying ethical concerns around AI, and explores how these concerns can inspire creative output across different domains. As part of this workshop, participants will be offered the opportunity to develop a creative output such as a story or piece of art inspired by AI ethical concerns, using AI as a co-creative tool. Participants will then work collaboratively to analyse and improve these outputs using a modified version of existing AI development hazard analysis techniques.
Austen Rainer and Catherine Menon. 2022. Voting item: story-work in human-centric software engineering. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 109–110. https://doi.org/10.1145/3528579.3529170
Austen Rainer. 2021. Storytelling in human–centric software engineering research. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 241–246. https://doi.org/10.1145/3463274.3463803