Academic excellence for business and the professions

Creativity Support Tools – Do They Really

Work?

HCID2013, 17th April 2013

Dr Sara Jones

Creativity

There’s an app for that!

Creativity

?

Overview

• Some background – creativity theory

• Some examples – creativity support tools

• Some history – evaluations of creativity support tools

• Some geography – a map of apps

• Some conclusions

The 4Ps of Creativity

• Person – the person doing the creative work

• Process – the process of doing the creative work

• Product – the creative output

• Press – the environment in which the the work is done

(Rhodes, 1961)

The characteristics of creative thinking

• An important concept in creativity, flow is an ‘almost automatic,

effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’

(Csikszentmihalyi, 1996)

• Divergent thinking is characterised by

– fluency (the ability to produce a large number of ideas or problem

solutions);

– flexibility (the ability to produce a wide variety of ideas);

– originality (the ability to produce new, original ideas)

(Guilford, 1950)

The stages of creative processes

Poincare/Wallas

1926

CPS model

1963

IDEO

2001

Shneiderman

2000

Mess-finding

Preparation Fact-finding Understand Collect

Problem-finding Observe

Incubation

Relate

Illumination Idea-finding Visualise Create

Verification Solution-finding Evaluate

Idea implementation Implement

Donate

Examples of existing tools – method guidance

IDEO method cards

Creative Whack Pack

Thoughtoffice

Examples of existing tools – mind-mapping

MindManager

iMindMap

Freemind

Examples of existing tools – random stimuli

Random word generators

The Brainstormer

Examples of existing tools – analogical

reasoning

AnTiQue Carer

Examples of existing tools - small teams and

workshops

Pictionaire

Workspace from University of Konstanz

NOOT

Creative Stickies

Application developed at City

for writing digital post-its on a

Microsoft Surface

• Study 1: more ideas in

creative workshops than with

Creative Stickies

• Study 2: private preparation

and more space yielded

more ideas

• Study 3: but in a

comparative study, paper

post-its still preferred

Study 1

Study 2

Creative Design Stations

Work at City on using digital

technologies (projection, video

recording and streaming, digital

pens) in physical spaces

to support creative design found

simpler spaces are preferred

CityVis

Investigation at City into the use of

interactive visualisations to support

collaborative idea generation

Digital shared spaces for creative workshops

Comparison at City of digital and non-digital

environments for idea generation workshops

Showed no difference in idea quality or quantity,

but still some preference for non-digital

environments

Carer

Application developed at City to support creativity in the care of people with dementia

– Creative thinking from cases of good dementia care practice

– Creative thinking from cases of good practice in analogical domains – other worlds

– Creative thinking from creativity triggers generated from cases

Evaluation in a residential care home found the use of Carer lead care staff to more creative care in response to challenging situations

Centre for Creativity in

Professional Practice

Stickyworld

Evaluation beginning next week!

My top tools

My top tools

• Twitter – for inspiration

My top tools

• Twitter – for inspiration

• Textedit – for lack of distraction

My top tools

• Twitter – for inspiration

• Textedit – for lack of distraction

• Trello – for agile team management

My top tools

• Twitter – for inspiration

• Textedit – for lack of distraction

• Trello – for agile team management

• Google Drive – for real time virtual team work

Map of Apps

• What are your favourite tools?

Conclusion

• Tools can help stimulate and enhance your creativity, but

Conclusion

• Tools can help stimulate and enhance your creativity, but

• You don’t have to use special creativity apps, because

Conclusion

• Tools can help stimulate and enhance your creativity, but

• You don’t have to use special creativity apps, because

• It ain’t the tools that you use, it’s the way that you use them!

Thanks and questions

Masters in Human-Centred Systems (HCS)

Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (the MICL)

Interdisciplinary Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice http://www.city.ac.uk/centre-for-creativity-in-professional-practice

#ICLCity 2013 – May 13th

One day conference on innovation, creativity and leadership

@svjaok

s.v.jones@city.ac.uk