Visual blending is the idea of taking two objects or concepts that you want to represent and combining them in a way that both concepts are identifiable, while also implying that one concept is applicable to the other. The creation of visual blends is a very creative process. But with Visiblend, the authors have created a system that has greatly streamlined the process of creating visual blends, and even split the process up as microtasks. The process of creating visual blends is split up into tasks of ideation of related concepts, searching of singular representative images with simple iconic shapes for the ideated concepts, and annotate the shapes on the images. The system then takes this information to create different combinations (blends) of the images and returns them to the user for evaluation and further iteration. They conduct three case studies looking at how Visiblend can be used under different situations. They also make note of the limitations that Visiblend can only deal with simple iconic shapes and cannot do more complex stuff like animations.
The visual blended images are some of the most powerful imagery I’ve ever come across. They convey ideas so well. I think that this is a really good project that is streamlining the process of creating these powerful images. I am actually shocked at how simple the steps are (granted, it takes a lot more work to actually make it look good). But still, very surprising. Initially, I felt that the system was very limited because all it was doing was cropping and overlaying one picture on top of the other. How could that be of possible use? But then I realized that the real value was coming from the fact that it is able to perform so many blends automatically with no human effort and demo them all. It’s utility comes from the speed and iteration of the visual blends that we can do through it. It’s also really interesting how the tool allows to visualize really unintuitive combinations (like the McDonald’s + energy example). Where a human doing it would be really limited by their preconceived notions of both those concepts, a machine doesn’t have those blocks and can therefore present any combination of zany ideas that a human can look at go “Oh! That does work!”. So it serves as the perfect tool to come up with ideas because it does not have any inhib
itions.
- What kind of workflow would be necessary to do something like this, but for animation and gifs instead of static images?
- Do you think this streamlined workflow would impede some creative ideas from being conceptualized because people’s thought processes are trained to think this way?
- In your opinion, does Visiblend function better as a centralized collaborative tool (where everyone is in the same room) or as a distributed collaborative tools (i.e. using crowd workers on crowd work platforms)?
