What...

At INRIA Paris, I led a research-through-design project into technologies that support embodied creativity. This project was part of the larger goals of this lab in examining the limits of technology as it is used for unexpected, creative goals, and concluded with the fabrication of three technology probes, which were tested with creatives in Paris.

Why...

This project was the conclusion to my MSc. in human-computer interaction design. I worked beneath the well-known HCI researcher Wendy Mackay, and aimed to extend her research group's goals of critically pushing interaction design, especially in the edge cases of creative and artist professionals' practices.

My project explored the fundamentals of the creative process, the value of movement for focus and creativity, and how serendipity can become a design goal. It was grounded in an intersection of the latest creativity research from neuroscience and psychology, with the existing HCI work on creativity and embodied tools. I used design to explore the gap between the new embodied nature of creativity in the former, and the focused, goal-oriented creativity of the latter.

How...

I worked with creative professionals to fundamentally understand their creative processes, and explored, through design, how technologies could be created to better support their work.

I began by collecting stories of creativity, inspiration, and process from musicians, audio engineers, visual artists, illustrators, graphic designers and architects.

I synthesized these stories into three key findings (or themes) of professionals' creative process: the signature toolbox, the mindfuck mindset, and manufactured obstacles.

At the same time, I explored the exisiting design space of fidget tools and bimanual interaction. This involved exploring existing and potential interactions, as well as the nature of physical forms.

Using these three themes, plus a background of creativity theory from psychology and neuroscience, I led several brainstorming and ideation sessions with colleagues in the Paris lab.

These diverse ideas led to a design space, that was iteratively shaped to encompass the key ideas and findings from the brainstorms. I also synthesized the top ideas from the video brainstorms in a video prototype, to test these ideas in situated interactions.

The findings of the video prototype clearly pointed to the need for a clearer, more directed design approach, which led to the plan to create three technology probes. These were spread out to offer some cover on the design space, and touch on different creatives.

Through design and development, the probes took on their final forms as the DreamEasel, FidgiPen, and AirSampler.

The DreamEasel, FidgiPen, and AirSampler were given to a writer, an illustrator and a music producer respectively. Through collaborative use and redesign of the probes, I generated a refined deisgn space, and process for designing Creativity Support Tools for embodied creativity.