1. Academic excellence for business and the professions
Creativity Support Tools – Do They Really
Work?
HCID2013, 17th April 2013
Dr Sara Jones

2. Creativity
There’s an app for that!

3. Creativity
?

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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)

7. 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

8. Examples of existing tools – method guidance
IDEO method cards
Creative Whack Pack
Thoughtoffice

9. Examples of existing tools – mind-mapping
MindManager
iMindMap
Freemind

10. Examples of existing tools – random stimuli
Random word generators
The Brainstormer

11. Examples of existing tools – analogical
reasoning
AnTiQue
Carer

12. Examples of existing tools - small teams and
workshops
Pictionaire
Workspace from
University of Konstanz
NOOT

13. 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

14. 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

15. CityVis
Investigation at City into the use of
interactive visualisations to support
collaborative idea generation

16. 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

17. 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

18. Stickyworld
Evaluation beginning next week!

19. My top tools

20. My top tools
• Twitter – for inspiration

21. My top tools
• Twitter – for inspiration
• Textedit – for lack of distraction

22. My top tools
• Twitter – for inspiration
• Textedit – for lack of distraction
• Trello – for agile team management

23. My top tools
• Twitter – for inspiration
• Textedit – for lack of distraction
• Trello – for agile team management
• Google Drive – for real time virtual team work

24. Map of Apps
• What are your favourite tools?

25. Conclusion
• Tools can help stimulate and enhance your creativity, but

26. Conclusion
• Tools can help stimulate and enhance your creativity, but
• You don’t have to use special creativity apps, because

27. 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!

28. 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