I smell creativity: exploring the effects of olfactory and auditory cues to support creative writing tasks

Humans perceive different objects, scenes or places using all their senses. Our sensory richness also plays an important role for creative activities. Humans also recall those sensory experiences in order to spark creativity, e.g. while writing a text. This paper presents a study with 100 students, divided in groups, that explores the effect of auditory and olfactory cues and their combina tion during a creative writing exercise. Our results provide useful insights sug gesting that olfactory cues have an important role in the creative process of users and even when this type of cues are combined with auditory cues. We believe, that this type of modalities should gain more relevance on the development of creativity support tools and environments for supporting the creative writing pro cess.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

"It's cleaner, definitely": Collaborative Process in Audio Production.

Working from vague client instructions, how do audio producers collaborate to diagnose what specifically is wrong with a piece of music, where the problem is and what to do about it? This paper presents a design ethnography that uncovers some of the ways in which two music producers co-ordinate their understanding of complex representations of pieces of music while working together in a studio. Our analysis shows that audio producers constantly make judgements based on audio and visual evidence while working with complex digital tools, which can lead to ambiguity in assessments of issues. We show how multimodal conduct guides the process of work and that complex media objects are integrated as elements of interaction by the music producers. The findings provide an understanding how people currently collaborate when producing audio, to support the design of better tools and systems for collaborative audio production in the future

A practical idea creation, capture and management framework for innovation

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Innovation is an activity essential to the success of individuals, organizations and wider society. Idea creation, capture and management account for a significant part of the innovation process, and yet have been widely disregarded by individuals, organizations and society. A small (and growing) number of individuals and organizations have begun to realize this and have moved to implement innovation frameworks in their own contexts. These tools and previous work address innovation from an organizational standpoint. However, it is individuals that initiate, create, cultivate and implement ideas. This thesis proposes a research-based framework that supports innovation which is instigated and driven by individuals. The key objective is to provide methods for structuring and sharing ideas, thus supporting innovators and driving the innovation process. The thesis develops the framework through analysis of existing tools, as well as a qualitative and quantitative analysis of innovator’s practices and mindset. In summary, this thesis presents a new paradigm of mobile open innovation that allows individuals to share and pursue their ideas with greater efficiency and ease. This new perspective in conjunction with the framework improves innovation practice and benefits the productivity of organizations and the world

Understanding productive, structural and longitudinal interactions in the design of tools for creative activities

A deeper understanding of the interactions between people and artefacts that characterise creative activities could be valuable in designing the next generation of creativity support. This paper presents three perspectives on creative interaction that have emerged from four years of empirical and design research. We argue that creative interaction can be usefully viewed in terms of Productive Interaction -focused engagement on the development of a creative outcome, Structural Interaction - the development of the structures in which production occurs, and Longitudinal Interaction - the long-term development of resources and relationships that increase creative potential. An analysis of each perspective is described, along with the development of an exemplary prototype. The use of the perspectives as a basis for design is considered, including the influence of contextual factors on instances of creative activities

Moving sounds and sonic moves : exploring interaction quality of embodied music mediation technologies through a user-centered perspective

This research project deals with the user-experience related to embodied music mediation technologies. More specifically, adoption and policy problems surrounding new media (art) are considered, which arise from the usability issues that to date pervade new interfaces for musical expression. Since the emergence of new wireless mediators and control devices for musical expression, there is an explicit aspiration of the creative industries and various research centers to embed such technologies into different areas of the cultural industries. The number of applications and their uses have exponentially increased over the last decade. Conversely, many of the applications to date still suffer from severe usability problems, which not only hinder the adoption by the cultural sector, but also make culture participants take a rather cautious, hesitant, or even downright negative stance towards these technologies. Therefore, this thesis takes a vantage point that is in part sociological in nature, yet has a link to cultural studies as well. It combines this with a musicological frame of reference to which it introduces empirical user-oriented approaches, predominantly taken from the field of human-computer-interaction studies. This interdisciplinary strategy is adopted to cope with the complex nature of digital embodied music controlling technologies. Within the Flanders cultural (and creative) industries, opportunities of systems affiliated with embodied interaction are created and examined. This constitutes an epistemological jigsaw that looks into 1) “which stakeholders require what various levels of involvement, what interactive means and what artistic possibilities?”, 2) “the way in which artistic aspirations, cultural prerequisites and operational necessities of (prospective) users can be defined?”, 3) “how functional, artistic and aesthetic requirements can be accommodated?”, and 4) “how quality of use and quality of experience can be achieved, quantified, evaluated and, eventually, improved?”. Within this multi-facetted problem, the eventual aim is to assess the applicability of the foresaid technology, both from a theoretically and empirically sound basis, and to facilitate widening and enhancing the adoption of said technologies. Methodologically, this is achieved by 1) applied experimentation, 2) interview techniques, 3) self-reporting and survey research, 4) usability evaluation of existing devices, and 5) human-computer interaction methods applied – and attuned – to the specific case of embodied music mediation technologies. Within that scope, concepts related to usability, flow, presence, goal assessment and game enjoyment are scrutinized and applied, and both task- and experience-oriented heuristics and metrics are developed and tested. In the first part, covering three chapters, the general context of the thesis is given. In the first chapter, an introduction to the topic is offered and the current problems are enumerated. In the second chapter, a broader theoretical background is presented of the concepts that underpin the project, namely 1) the paradigm of embodiment and its connection to musicology, 2) a state of the arts concerning new interfaces for musical expression, 3) an introduction into HCI-usability and its application domain in systematic musicology, 4) an insight into user-centered digital design procedures, and 5) the challenges brought about by e-culture and digitization for the cultural-creative industries. In the third chapter, the state of the arts concerning the available methodologies related to the thesis’ endeavor is discussed, a set of literature-based design guidelines are enumerated and from this a conceptual model is deduced which is gradually presented throughout the thesis, and fully deployed in the “SoundField”-project (as described in Chapter 9). The following chapters, contained in the second part of the thesis, give a quasi-chronological overview of how methodological concepts have been applied throughout the empirical case studies, aimed specifically at the exploration of the various aspects of the complex status quaestionis. In the fourth chapter, a series of application-based tests, predominantly revolving around interface evaluation, illustrate the complex relation between gestural interfaces and meaningful musical expression, advocating a more user-centered development approach to be adopted. In the fifth chapter, a multi-purpose questionnaire dubbed “What Moves You” is discussed, which aimed at creating a survey of the (prospective) end-users of embodied music mediation technologies. Therefore, it primarily focused on cultural background, musical profile and preferences, views on embodied interaction, literacy of and attitudes towards new technology and participation in digital culture. In the sixth chapter, the ethnographical studies that accompanied the exhibition of two interactive art pieces, entitled "Heart as an Ocean" & "Lament", are discussed. In these studies, the use of interview and questionnaire methodologies together with the presentation and reception of interactive art pieces, are probed. In the seventh chapter, the development of the collaboratively controlled music-game “Sync-In-Team” is presented, in which interface evaluation, presence, game enjoyment and goal assessment are the pivotal topics. In the eighth chapter, two usability studies are considered, that were conducted on prototype systems/interfaces, namely a heuristic evaluation of the “Virtual String” and a usability metrics evaluation on the “Multi-Level Sonification Tool”. The findings of these two studies in conjunction with the exploratory studies performed in association with the interactive art pieces, finally gave rise to the “SoundField”-project, which is recounted in full throughout the ninth chapter. The integrated participatory design and evaluation method, presented in the conceptual model is fully applied over the course of the “SoundField”-project, in which technological opportunities and ecological validity and applicability are investigated through user-informed development of numerous use cases. The third and last part of the thesis renders the final conclusions of this research project. The tenth chapter sets out with an epilogue in which a brief overview is given on how the state of the arts has evolved since the end of the project (as the research ended in 2012, but the research field has obviously moved on), and attempts to consolidate the implications of the research studies with some of the realities of the Flemish cultural-creative industries. Chapter eleven continues by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the conceptual model throughout the various stages of the project. Also, it comprises the evaluation of the hypotheses, how the assumptions that were made held up, and how the research questions eventually could be assessed. Finally, the twelfth and last chapter concludes with the most important findings of the project. Also, it discusses some of the implications on cultural production, artistic research policy and offers an outlook on future research beyond the scope of the “SoundField” project

Performative Authoring: Nurturing Children’s Creativity and Creative Self-Efficacy through Digitally-Augmented Enactment-Based Storytelling

Psychological research, especially by Paul Torrance, has shown that the child’s engagement in creative activities tends to drop precipitously at around the 3rd- to 4th-grade period (8 to 11 years old). This phenomenon, called the ‘Fourth-Grade Slump’, occurs possibly because of an increase in social awareness and critical self-evaluation of competence in the child during this period. Increasing awareness of the complexity of the world’s problems, new paradigms of design focusing on the user, and advances in technology has led to rapid developments in the design and development of tools to support children’s creativity. Research in creativity support tools has generally focused on augmenting creative performance within specific tasks, using strategies such as facilitating access to information, or exposing the user to a space of possible combinations. Much less studied however, is how tools may help to develop positive attitudes towards creativity in individuals. This is important, especially in systems designed for children where the focus on the development of the person, during critical periods of growth such as the period of the Fourth-Grade Slump, may be said to be of equivalent or greater importance than the support of process or the generation of product. In the domain of storytelling or narrative construction, work in child development, educational pedagogy, social psychology, and performance studies have looked at how to tap into the power of children’s imagination during pretend play to nurture their storytelling abilities and their sense of self-efficacy or confidence. These interventions typically take the form of drama workshops or classroom roleplaying exercises. While results appear to provide good evidence that drama interventions and theater-based methods have some positive effects on children’s development of narratives, studies have shown mixed results in terms of the effects on children’s self-efficacy. I refer here to self-efficacy in the sense of a child’s perception of her creative abilities, in other words, her belief that she can produce creative outcomes. This creativity-oriented sense of self-efficacy has been called ‘creative self-efficacy’. This dissertation investigates how pretend play can be harnessed into the design of an interface to support children’s creativity in storytelling and their sense of creative self-efficacy. This overarching question was explored through four phases of research: Exploration, Design, Evaluation, and Integration. The Exploration phase consisted of two studies: a) a set of interviews with elementary school teachers, and b) an experimental study of how the interface or medium may affect children’s creative storytelling process; The Design phase consisted of two experimental studies, and design and development: a) the first study investigated how the physicality of props may support children’s enactment-based storytelling, and b) the second study explored the influence of the presentation of digital contextual/environmental cues on children’s enactment-based storytelling, c) design and development consisted of an exercise using the NEVO methodology to embody design knowledge gained from the Design phase into a concrete usable system, called DiME; The Evaluation phase consisted of two studies: a) the first was a pilot study that tested the usability of DiME and protocol of use with children, and b) the second was an experimental study across two school districts with different profiles investigating the effects of digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling using DiME, on children’s creativity, story writing and creative self-efficacy; The Integration phase of the research consisted of a workshop with elementary school teachers, which initiated an exploration into how such a story authoring approach may be used in an elementary school curriculum and setting. The body of work that this dissertation presents elucidates (i) a physical enactment-based method for the authoring of stories by children, and (ii) how a digitally-augmented space may move beyond simple drama methods to positively influence the child’s creativity and imagination during storytelling, as well as her self-belief and motivation to engage in creation. The digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling environment, that I term performative authoring, allows the child to collaboratively create a story through pretend play with a partner, while her enactments are reflected in real-time in the form of animated cartoon characters and objects on a large screen display through the use of motion tracking technologies. I have found that performative authoring has positive effects not only on the child’s creative self-efficacy, especially for the less extraverted children, but also on the richness of the child’s retelling or written narrative of her story. The significance of the results of the studies is with respect to the various domains and subareas represented (child-computer interaction, interactive storytelling, education and educational psychology, creativity and cognition). There is great potential to extend the concept of exploiting digitally-augmented enactment to support and scaffold higher-level cognition, beyond physical enactment. Extensions of this work include making use of more epistemic forms of enactment, instead of full-blown enactment, to support children’s creative story brainstorming, or to make use of digitally-augmented enactment to support other forms of higher thought apart from creativity and imagination. In the domain of storytelling or narrative construction, work in child development, educational pedagogy, social psychology, and performance studies have looked at how to tap into the power of children’s imagination during pretend play to nurture their storytelling abilities and their sense of self-efficacy or confidence. These interventions typically take the form of drama workshops or classroom roleplaying exercises. While results appear to provide good evidence that drama interventions and theater-based methods have some positive effects on children’s development of narratives, studies have shown mixed results in terms of the effects on children’s self-efficacy. I refer here to self-efficacy in the sense of a child’s perception of her creative abilities, in other words, her belief that she can produce creative outcomes. This creativity-oriented sense of self-efficacy has been called ‘creative self-efficacy’ (Beghetto, 2006, 2007). This dissertation investigates how pretend play can be harnessed into the design of an interface to support children’s creativity in storytelling and their sense of creative self-efficacy. This overarching question was explored through four phases of research: I. Exploration, II. Design, III. Evaluation, and IV. Integration. Phase 1 Exploration consisted of two studies: 1A) a set of interviews with elementary school teachers, and 1B) an experimental study of how the interface or medium may affect children’s creative storytelling process; Phase 2 Design consisted of two experimental studies, and design and development: 2A) the first study investigates how the physicality of props may support children’s enactment-based storytelling, and 2B) the second study explores the influence of the presentation of digital contextual/environmental cues on children’s enactment-based storytelling, 2C) design and development consisted of an exercise using the NEVO methodology to embody design knowledge gained from Phase 2 into a concrete usable system, called DiME; Phase 3 Evaluation consisted of two studies: 3A) the first was a pilot study that tested the usability of DiME and protocol of use with children, and 3B) the second was an experimental study across two school districts with different profiles investigating the effects of digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling using DiME, on children’s creativity, story writing and creative self-efficacy; and Phase 4 Integration consisted of a workshop with elementary school teachers, which initiated an exploration into how such a story authoring approach may be used in an elementary school curriculum and setting. The body of work that this dissertation presents elucidates (i) a physical enactment-based method for the authoring of stories by children, and (ii) how a digitally-augmented space may move beyond simple drama methods to positively influence the child’s creativity and imagination during storytelling, as well as her self-belief and motivation to engage in creation. The digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling environment, termed performative authoring in this document, allows the child to collaboratively create a story through pretend play with a partner, while her enactments are reflected in real-time in the form of animated cartoon characters and objects on a large screen display through the use of motion tracking technologies. I have found that performative authoring has positive effects not only on the child’s creative self- efficacy, especially for the less extraverted children, but also on the richness of the child’s retelling or written narrative of her story. This dissertation concludes by discussing the significance of the results of our studies with respect to the various domains and subareas represented (child-computer interaction, interactive storytelling, education and educational psychology, creativity and cognition) and extends the concept of exploiting digitally-augmented enactment to support and scaffold higher-level cognition, beyond physical enactment. Extensions of this work include making use of more epistemic forms of enactment, instead of full-blown enactment, to support children’s creative story brainstorming, or to make use of digitally-augmented enactment to support other forms of higher thought apart from creativity and imagination