Chasing RATs: Tracing Reading for and as Creative Activity
2026-03-11 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer InteractionInformation RetrievalMultimediaSocial and Information Networks
AI summaryⓘ
The authors point out that creativity isn't just about making things, but also about the reading and interpreting process that comes before it. They introduce Reading Activity Traces (RATs), which track how people explore and think about information, treating this as a creative act itself. Through their example called WikiRAT on Wikipedia, they show how these traces help us see the thought process that is often hidden or lost when computers automate reading. Their work aims to help build tools that keep human interpretation visible and valued.
Creativity researchReading Activity Traces (RATs)WikiRATInterpretive laborAlgorithmic feedsAI summarizationReader modelingCollective sensemakingReflective practice
Authors
Sophia Liu, Shm Garanganao Almeda
Abstract
Creativity research has privileged making over the interpretive labor that precedes and shapes it. We introduce Reading Activity Traces (RATs), a proposal that treats reading -- broadly defined to include navigating, interpreting, and curating media across interconnected sources -- as creative activity both for future artifacts and as a form of creation in its own right. By tracing trajectories of traversal, association, and reflection as inspectable artifacts, RATs render visible the creative work that algorithmic feeds and AI summarization increasingly compress and automate away. We illustrate this through WikiRAT, a speculative instantiation on Wikipedia, and open new ground for reflective practice, reader modeling, collective sensemaking, and understanding what is lost when human interpretation is automated -- towards designing intelligent tools that preserve it.