Creative Sense-Making (CSM) emerged through a series of interdisciplinary investigations into creativity, collaboration, improvisation, and human-AI interaction conducted by Nicholas Davis during doctoral research in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. The framework developed gradually across multiple publications exploring co-creative systems, participatory interaction, enactive cognition, and computational creativity. (Google Scholar)
The earliest foundations of the framework can be seen in research investigating distributed cognition and collaborative creativity in digital media environments. Early work explored how creativity emerges not solely from isolated individuals, but from interaction between participants, tools, environments, and evolving constraints. In 2011, research on distributed cognition in digital filmmaking and collaborative perceptual logic systems began establishing many of the interaction-centered principles that would later become central to Creative Sense-Making. (nickmdavis.com)
A major conceptual shift occurred through subsequent work on computational co-creation and enactive cognition. In 2015, “An Enactive Model of Creativity for Computational Collaboration and Co-Creation” proposed that creativity should be understood through the lens of enaction and participatory interaction rather than static symbol manipulation alone. This work argued that future co-creative systems would need to participate dynamically alongside human collaborators instead of functioning merely as autonomous generators or passive tools. (ResearchGate)
This enactive foundation became increasingly formalized through empirical investigations into human-AI creative interaction. In 2016, research on participatory sense-making in abstract drawing with a co-creative cognitive agent explored how humans and AI systems coordinate meaning-making during improvisational creative interaction. These studies examined interaction rhythms, turn-taking behaviors, adaptation, and mutual influence during collaborative drawing sessions. At the same time, the development of co-creative drawing agents provided experimental platforms for studying how collaborative creativity unfolds dynamically through interaction. (nickmdavis.com)
The framework crystallized in 2017 with the publication of “Creative Sense-Making: Quantifying Interaction Dynamics in Co-Creation,” presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition. This work introduced Creative Sense-Making as both a cognitive framework and an empirical methodology for analyzing interaction dynamics during open-ended co-creation. Rather than evaluating only final creative artifacts, the framework focused on how creativity emerges through evolving interaction itself. The work introduced techniques for quantifying collaborative dynamics through time, including interaction rhythms, coordination patterns, shifts in participation, and changing trajectories of shared meaning construction. (ACM Digital Library)
The accompanying doctoral dissertation, “Creative Sense-Making: A Cognitive Framework for Quantifying Interaction Dynamics in Co-Creation,” significantly expanded the theoretical and methodological foundations of the framework. The dissertation extended theories of enaction and participatory sense-making into the domain of open-ended creative collaboration, formalizing these ideas computationally within co-creative systems research. It proposed that creativity should be understood not merely as idea generation or artifact production, but as an emergent process arising through adaptive interaction between coupled participants. (Google Sites)
A major contribution of the dissertation was the introduction of “sense-making curves,” a method for representing and analyzing interaction dynamics continuously through time. This allowed researchers to study co-creative interaction not as isolated discrete events, but as evolving trajectories of collaborative cognition. The framework therefore shifted attention away from static evaluation and toward the dynamic structure of participation itself. (Google Sites)
Following the dissertation work, Creative Sense-Making continued expanding into broader investigations of co-creative AI systems, computational creativity, and interaction-centered design. Subsequent publications explored evaluation methodologies for co-creative systems, conceptual shifts in collaborative design systems, explainable co-creative AI, and cognitive frameworks for human-AI interaction. Across these works, a consistent theme remained: creativity emerges through interaction, adaptation, and participatory engagement rather than isolated generation alone. (arXiv)
More recently, the framework has evolved into broader investigations of enactive AI, adaptive interaction systems, participatory cognition, and human-AI collaborative creativity. These extensions continue exploring how intelligent systems can participate in open-ended creative processes through dynamic coupling with human collaborators rather than functioning solely as predictive generators. (nickmdavis.com)
Today, Creative Sense-Making stands as an interdisciplinary framework connecting:
enactive cognition,
participatory sense-making,
computational creativity,
human-computer interaction,
co-creative AI,
improvisational collaboration,
and adaptive systems research.
The framework continues to develop as part of ongoing investigations into interaction-centered models of intelligence, creativity, and human-AI co-creation.