How to educate for creativity in creative technology?

Abstract

Creative Technology is a new BSc programme at the University of Twente. Its goal is to design novel applications and products to improve daily life of people, with ICT as design material. Applications range from everyday life to health support, from playing and entertainment to serious gaming and socializing, from working and learning to art, while using instruments of stimulation, motivation, or support. The goal of the BSc programme is to give students the skills, methods and tools that enable them to design such products. A paradigm of Creative Technology is that existing technology has a potential that is not yet fully explored. This potential lies in the novel use and ways of integration of existing technologies into new and innovating applications and products. This perspective is different from classical technical education, and, consequently, requires also a shift of design methods and teaching approaches. How to stimulate creativity is not a new question. However, it mainly is addressed in other domains. Moreover, most of creativity stimulating techniques aim at different target groups, like children, artists, designers or managers, not technology students. And certainly they are not meant as relevant skills within scientific education. The contribution of this paper is a structured analysis of our attemps and experiences with five cohorts of students in teaching Creative Technology. We will discuss the implications for the teaching practice of Creative Technology and will outline the possibilities and limitations of our practices for other technology oriented design curricula