Creativity in the Design Process: Exploring the Influences of the Digital Evolution (Springer Series in Design and Innovation, 18) 3030872572, 9783030872571

Table of contents :
Foreword by Marita Canina
Foreword by Vlad P. Glăveanu
Preface: Introduction to the Book
Contents
Part I Adapting To a Changed World
1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The 4th Industrial Revolution: Technological and Social Changes
1.3 From Digital Natives to Digitally Enhanced Society
1.4 Challenges of Post-information Society: An Imagination Society
1.5 Toward a Digital Maturity: Creativity as a Driving Skill
References
2 The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between Humans and Digital Technologies
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Digitally Enhanced People: Evolving Multiple Human Components
2.3 Alteration of Modern Minds
2.4 Digital Technology, Emotion, and Behaviour
2.5 A Global Hyperconnected Community
References
3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Variegate Scenario of Creativity Definitions
3.3 Evolving Creativity: From Creativity 1.0 to Creativity 4.0
3.4 The Digital Creativity Domain
3.5 Perspectives to Explore Digital Creativity
References
Part II Design Exploring Digital Creativity
4 Design and Digital Creativity
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity
4.2.1 Componential Theories of Creativity
4.3 The Factors of Creativity
4.4 The Creative Process
References
5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive and Negative Influences on Creativity
5.1 Introduction
5.2 New Challenges for Creativity Cognitive Processes
5.3 New Tools, Stimuli, and Creative Behaviour
5.4 New Forms of Collaboration in the Digital Space
References
6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity Through Digital Technologies
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Digital Tech as a Co-Creator Partner
6.3 Digital Tech as Inspirational and Feeding Partner
6.4 Digital Tech as a Guide
6.5 Digital Tech as a Networker and Facilitator of Collaborative Processes
References
Part III Design Contribution: Tools to Observe and Empower Creativity in the Digital Age
7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model to Observe Digital Creativity
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements
7.3 Multiple Levels of Creativity in the Digital Age
7.4 Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model
References
8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework for Creative Empowerment
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Relevance of the Framework for Design: Nature and Objectives
8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework Structure and Its Factors
8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age
8.5 Guidelines to Adopt the Framework for Creative Empowerment
References
9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Reflections on the Developed Tools
9.3 Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity
9.4 People Transformation Towards Digital Maturity
References
Conclusion
Reference

Citation preview

Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18

Carmen Bruno

Creativity in the Design Process Exploring the Influences of the Digital Evolution

Springer Series in Design and Innovation Volume 18

Editor-in-Chief Francesca Tosi, University of Florence, Florence, Italy Series Editors Claudio Germak, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy Francesco Zurlo, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy Zhi Jinyi, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China Marilaine Pozzatti Amadori, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Maurizio Caon

, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Fribourg, Switzerland

Springer Series in Design and Innovation (SSDI) publishes books on innovation and the latest developments in the fields of Product Design, Interior Design and Communication Design, with particular emphasis on technological and formal innovation, and on the application of digital technologies and new materials. The series explores all aspects of design, e.g. Human-Centered Design/User Experience, Service Design, and Design Thinking, which provide transversal and innovative approaches oriented on the involvement of people throughout the design development process. In addition, it covers emerging areas of research that may represent essential opportunities for economic and social development. In fields ranging from the humanities to engineering and architecture, design is increasingly being recognized as a key means of bringing ideas to the market by transforming them into user-friendly and appealing products or services. Moreover, it provides a variety of methodologies, tools and techniques that can be used at different stages of the innovation process to enhance the value of new products and services. The series’ scope includes monographs, professional books, advanced textbooks, selected contributions from specialized conferences and workshops, and outstanding Ph.D. theses. Keywords: Product and System Innovation; Product design; Interior design; Communication Design; Human-Centered Design/User Experience; Service Design; Design Thinking; Digital Innovation; Innovation of Materials. How to submit proposals Proposals must include: title, keywords, presentation (max 10,000 characters), table of contents, chapter abstracts, editors’/authors’ CV. In case of proceedings, chairmen/editors are requested to submit the link to conference website (incl. relevant information such as committee members, topics, key dates, keynote speakers, information about the reviewing process, etc.), and approx. number of papers. Proposals must be sent to: series editor Prof. Francesca Tosi (francesca.tosi@unifi.it) and/or publishing editor Mr. Pierpaolo Riva ([email protected]).

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16270

Carmen Bruno

Creativity in the Design Process Exploring the Influences of the Digital Evolution

123

Carmen Bruno Department of Design Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy

ISSN 2661-8184 ISSN 2661-8192 (electronic) Springer Series in Design and Innovation ISBN 978-3-030-87257-1 ISBN 978-3-030-87258-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword by Marita Canina

We must shape technologies around human values and needs, rather than allowing technologies to shape humans. Our role is not only to contain the negative aspects of technologies, but to encourage human-centred innovation. In the age of automated decision-making and artificial intelligence, creativity and attention to human aspects are crucial to the education of future engineers and technologists.1 These principles, included in the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism, clearly outline the essence of the book that, through the lens of design, has been investigated, defined, and presented here with a systemic approach making its structure unique. In an increasingly complex, connected, and evolving world, human creativity has taken a central role in the digital transition, enabling people to continuously adapt to a fluid digital landscape. There is huge interest in creativity in multiple application areas and in emerging fields such as social innovation and environmental and economic sustainability. A key question that arises concerns the impacts of digital evolution on creative skills, especially for digital natives. This focus on creative, critical, and strategic thinking and complex problem-solving has ancient roots especially in the educational field. Einstein already emphasized the importance of what we now call soft skills and the need for schools not to transmit the maximum amount of knowledge but to develop in young people qualities and abilities such as critical spirit, originality, and motivation that represent a value for the entire community. In the design discipline, the interrelationship between design and creativity is one of the aspects that have always been addressed. The nature of design is investigated through creativity and vice versa by studying relationships that can provide essential knowledge for the understanding of both design and creativity processes. These studies use ‘design creativity’ as a notion different than simply ‘creativity’ precisely to emphasize the articulated relationship. The wide field of creativity studies acquires an even more articulated dimension when integrated with the concept of digital technologies and environments, whose analysis requires a structured exploratory framework that defines its boundaries and 1

https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/dighum-manifesto/.

v

vi

Foreword by Marita Canina

interactions. This new context of digital evolution poses complex and multidimensional challenges that cannot be addressed exclusively from the perspective of one discipline, thus requiring a transdisciplinary exploration of creativity. The complexity of creativity in transitional times, researched by a plurality of often non-communicating disciplines, requires new types of scholars, defined by Monturi as transdisciplinary researchers, whose task is to focus on the creative integration of existing research. This is exactly a strength that is presented in Carmen Bruno’s book: the dichotomy of design where design is both the tool for analysing, organizing knowledge about creativity in the digital transition, and the disciplinary domain on which this research has an impact. The hyperconnected society, the individual behaviours, the generational differences, and the focus on cognitive changes have triggered new forms of collaborative and distributed creativity that are systematically studied in Creativity in the Design Process through a human-centred design approach. The book proposes a model to explore how the notion of creativity is changing in the digital transition according to three levels of the human being (cognitive, individual, and social) assuming the principle that creativity should be treated in a multidimensional way as: cognitive process, individual practice carried out by the individual, and a sociocultural phenomenon that exist in relation to other individuals within the society. The most important factors of creativity in the digital transition are mapped on a creative design process constituting the Creativity 4.0 Framework. This represents a further tool to organize this knowledge already present in the literature as fragmented studies of various different disciplines (e.g. design, psychology, sociology, computer science). The value of the proposed tools is evident, making it possible to observe and understand the potential of digital technologies, interconnect all the information, and map the state of the art of the influences on creativity brought by the scenario of transition. By adopting these tools, design is enabled to define actions to both adopt consciously digital technologies for creative empowerment and empower the creative process itself. The impact of the book at a disciplinary level is undoubtedly incisive: it envisages the role of design in the digital era defining its fundamental responsibility in (i) creating methods and tools for new transdisciplinary researchers and (ii) being strategic in guiding the development of possible and desirable human-centred futures, enabled by new technologies. Marita Canina Department of Design Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy

Foreword by Vlad P. Glăveanu

Creativity has always been a tool-mediated process. In coming up with meaningful novelties, we need much more than a mind guided by combinatorial and divergent thinking, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation. Creating depends on a world of people, objects, institutions, places, and spaces. And there is no denying that, over the past decades, the tools and spaces of human creativity have become mostly digital. Our task, in this context, is not to question whether technology helps or hinders creative expression given that the ways in which we create today are already technological. What we need is a deep reflection on the nature of Creativity 4.0 or digital creativity, and how it shapes our daily life, our society, and our understanding of who we are. Carmen Bruno’s Creativity in the Design Process offers as this kind of timely reflection and does so in a profound and scholarly manner, informed by both theory and practice in the fields of creativity, design, and technology. One of its main contributions comes from placing in dialogue fields of inquiry like design studies, creativity research, and science and technology studies, creating a powerful theoretical mix that can truly shed light on the current developments of the post-information society and even offer us a glimpse of the future. Digital maturity becomes, as such, an aim we should all work towards, a state in which designing creative forms of technology and using digital creativity to address individual and collective challenges becomes the norm. The present book makes many compelling arguments. It discusses the interconnected nature of our lives and the need to continue blurring the line between online and offline. It talks about the great importance of knowing and using design principles in order to act creatively within highly technological environments. It makes the case for Creativity 4.0 and a completely new manner of thinking about the means, aims, contexts, and consequences of being a creative being in the twenty-first century. Most of all, it invites us to consider the opportunities and challenges of digital creativity and the ways in which we can enhance the former and diminish the latter.

vii

viii

Foreword by Vlad P. Glăveanu

The story of human creativity has already been marked by radical shifts. From a view of being inspired by Gods and muses, in antiquity, to being fascinated by our own generative powers, from the Renaissance onwards, we already went through a ‘Copernican’ Revolution. Today, we are undergoing a similar revolution, this time taking us from individual creators and their productions to interconnected forms of being, designing, and thinking. In this new landscape, creativity does not come either from ‘above’ or from ‘within’ but emerges out of the mixes and mashes of the actual and virtual, personal and social, and cognitive and technological. This requires new theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches that capture the systemic, dynamic, and oftentimes chaotic paths of designing with and for creativity. It also asks for different skills and mindsets, adapted for the (brave) new world we are all creating together. These go beyond classic design thinking procedures and move towards being empowered in and through digital creativity. With great technological power also comes great responsibility. We need, more than ever, an ethical reflection as to what, why, and how we proceed, creatively, to shape our world and, in doing so, the world of others and of future generations. The study of Creativity 4.0 needs to depart from the environmental and societal challenges we are confronted with in a (post)pandemic world and lead us towards not only highly technological but human and wise solutions. Creative design has never required a moral compass more, and if we are to ever reach digital maturity, our concern has to be equally divided between the tools we use and the consequences of our actions. As a species, we have always created in order to adapt to and to grow in ever-changing environments and not for the sake of disruption. This is a lesson we must carry over to our times—digital creativity needs to improve lives, not just change them. A final question emerges. Is Creativity 4.0 completely different from the creativity that drove our ancestors to use the first wheel or to raise magnificent cathedrals in the Middle Ages, or to invent the Internet much closer to our days? Yes and no. We have always created as social, cultural, and embodied beings, together with others and supported by a variety of practical tools, from pen and paper to hammers and nails to advanced hardware and software. But these tools are not only produced by minds and hands, they also transform them. Carmen Bruno extends a compelling invitation to recognize and engage with this transformation, and nobody today can afford to ignore it. We would do so at our own peril. November 2020

Vlad P. Glăveanu Webster University Geneva Bellevue, Switzerland University of Bergen Bergen, Norway

Preface: Introduction to the Book

In the twenty-first century, massive economic and technological changes are totally affecting the ways in which people live and work, and how society is viewed and organize. This century has seen the introduction of completely new devices, sensors, robots, and applications that are changing how people process information, behave, and socialize, and the skills and the mindset they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world. Ubiquitous, invisible, and affective computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, robotics, virtual/augmented reality, and all the emerging technologies are changing skills requirements and capacity building for the twenty-first-century digital economy. Three key reflections emerged—around six years ago—by observing this ongoing scenario of digital transition from a creativity and design-oriented perspective. These reflections inspired the beginning of my research journey reported in this book. The first observation is that the digital transition is having an impact on multiple dimensions of human beings. The increasing widespread of digital technologies is changing people’s mindsets, as well as behaviours, social attitudes, and the entire human dimension of participating, collaborating, and sharing. All these important changes are rising a set of fundamental questions and discussions, at both the individual and relational levels, that invests several realms, among which psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and pedagogy stand out. Many researchers are questioning the impact of ICTs on human cognition, especially in terms of brain modification and changes in cognitive processes. Neuroscientists are beginning to see significant changes that correlate with the diffusion of digital technologies and their widespread adoption. Important questions are emerging also in relation to the social behavioural changes and the shift in mindset that has led to the creation of new social phenomenon, initiatives, and communities (e.g. open source, peer-to-peer, etc.) emerging with the aim of contributing to a more community-oriented society.

ix

x

Preface: Introduction to the Book

These human changes observed are directly connected with the second key reflection, which concerns the increased awareness in our society of the arising of a digital generation with different social and learning behaviours. New generations are growing totally immersed in a digital world. They have been described as more open, democratic, creative, and innovative than the previous ones, presenting new consumption and social behaviours, new learning preferences, new work style. They need to develop a new set of skill to creatively face complex problem of the new century. These generations will comprise the future workers, and they should be able to work in multidisciplinary teams, producing knowledge and innovation. We are all moving towards digital enhancement, and companies should be able to deal with a digital generation representing the workforce of tomorrow. As human beings, we are transforming society through machines and technologies; therefore, we must learn how to live comfortably with them and how to manage a radical change that will occur in less than a generation without suffering from them. This means reaching a digital maturity defined as a ‘continuous and ongoing process of adaptation to a changing digital landscape’. Reaching a digital maturity makes possible a continuous process of understanding and possibly anticipating the foreseeable opportunities, as well as the threats, that will be offered by the digital evolution, developing a strategic approach to the adoption and application of such technologies. Digital progress and evolution cannot be stopped or even slowed down, and as human beings, we have to define our role towards them. The third connected key reflection that has emerged in this context is that the digital transition is having an important impact on the process of creating and innovating, requiring the development of creative skills by humans. The post-information society will continue to enable new forms of human–machine collaboration, changing the ability to create and make innovation, and providing new opportunities and threats that need to be managed and guided properly. Therefore, in this digital transition, creativity has been recognized as one of the most distinctive human skills to nurture and to best manage the powerful collaboration. The democratization of digital technologies has opened new opportunities for people to engage in creative activities, generating innovative digital ideas and projects, and contributing to an increasingly diffuse manifestation of creative acts. With digital advancement, creativity also evolves to become a distributed phenomenon with a strong social meaning: digital creativity. Digital creativity involves new stimuli and requires new human factors to generate innovative digital outcomes taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies in any field. In this scenario of transition, design should play the fundamental role of guiding and supporting the transformation of people towards digital maturity, by empowering their creativity and design skills.

Preface: Introduction to the Book

xi

To play the role of a guide, it becomes fundamental for the design discipline to explore the new shapes of creativity—namely digital creativity—that require studying the potential influence of digital technologies on creativity and the new digital opportunities for empowering the creative design process. The book aims to provide an open and integrated view of creativity in the twenty-first century, merging theories and case studies from design, psychology, sociology, computer science, and human–computer interaction, while benefitting from a continuous dialogue within a network of experts in these fields. An exploratory journey will guide the reader through the major social, human, and technological changes that influence human creative abilities, highlighting the fundamental factors that need to be stimulated for creative empowerment in the digital era. The book reflects on why and how design practice and design research should explore digital creativity and promote the empowerment of creativity, presenting two flexible tools specifically developed to: (1) observe the influences on multiple level of human creativity in the digital transition and (2) understand their positive and negative effect on the creative design process. An overview of the main influences and opportunities collected by adopting the two tools are presented with guidelines to design actions to empower the process for innovation. In this transition, design must acquire the fundamental knowledge to update its toolbox and educational models for the next generation of designers. The role of current and future designers should be to enhance and facilitate the creative abilities of another generation of people and to guide the technological development addressing new digital challenges, while generating positive consequences in the world and achieving large-scale innovation. Milan, Italy

Carmen Bruno

Contents

Part I

Adapting To a Changed World ....... .......

3 3

....... .......

4 7

....... ....... .......

10 12 13

......... .........

15 15

. . . . .

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The 4th Industrial Revolution: Technological and Social Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 From Digital Natives to Digitally Enhanced Society . . . . 1.4 Challenges of Post-information Society: An Imagination Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Toward a Digital Maturity: Creativity as a Driving Skill . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between Humans and Digital Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Digitally Enhanced People: Evolving Multiple Human Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Alteration of Modern Minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Digital Technology, Emotion, and Behaviour . . . . . . . 2.5 A Global Hyperconnected Community . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

16 17 21 24 26

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Variegate Scenario of Creativity Definitions . . . . . . . 3.3 Evolving Creativity: From Creativity 1.0 to Creativity 4.0 3.4 The Digital Creativity Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Perspectives to Explore Digital Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

29 29 30 32 35 38 40

. . . . .

xiii

xiv

Part II

Contents

Design Exploring Digital Creativity . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

45 45 46 48 54 60 63

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive and Negative Influences on Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 New Challenges for Creativity Cognitive Processes . . . . . . . 5.3 New Tools, Stimuli, and Creative Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 New Forms of Collaboration in the Digital Space . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

67 67 68 72 76 79

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

83 83 84 87 90

.... ....

91 95

4 Design and Digital Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity 4.2.1 Componential Theories of Creativity . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Factors of Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 The Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity Through Digital Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Digital Tech as a Co-Creator Partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Digital Tech as Inspirational and Feeding Partner . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Digital Tech as a Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Digital Tech as a Networker and Facilitator of Collaborative Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part III

Design Contribution: Tools to Observe and Empower Creativity in the Digital Age

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model to Observe Digital Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements . 7.3 Multiple Levels of Creativity in the Digital Age . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework for Creative Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Relevance of the Framework for Design: Nature and Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework Structure and Its Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

99 99 100 105 109 115

. . . . 117 . . . . 117 . . . . 118 . . . . 120

Contents

xv

8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 8.5 Guidelines to Adopt the Framework for Creative Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Reflections on the Developed Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity 9.4 People Transformation Towards Digital Maturity . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

139 139 140 142 148 149

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Part I

Adapting To a Changed World

Chapter 1

Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

1.1

Introduction

The history of human society has been characterized by a continuous evolution and enhancement of capabilities—stemming from new tools and techniques—which have made possible over time liberation from restrictions and the acquisition of freedom. A series of past revolutions, including the agricultural and industrial, have brought about not only technological advances and greater convenience, but also structural changes to society. Indeed, moving from the Hunting Society to the Agrarian Society, humans gained and enhanced the ability to produce food, which freed them from hunger. In the Industrial Society, they increased production capabilities and mobility by harnessing motive power. In the Information Society, digitalization enhanced the capacity of telecommunications and information processing, which drastically increased the freedom to access information and communication of all kind, while freely exploring various opportunities for Internetbased services (Keidanren 2018). The rapid spread of digital devices such as smartphones has produced abundant data that circulate around the world creating new value all the time. The Post-information Age—where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has become the lifeblood that makes society work—represents one of the most significant steps taken by humanity for a very long time. Humankind is now at an important turning point in civilization, entering a Post-Information Society where the premises on which society is based are about to change dramatically. People come to terms with the emergence of environmental burden and social disparity caused by traditional economic systems on the one hand and rapid digital transformation on the other. In this new society, digital transformation, especially through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, provides augmented abilities to people that enable them to pursue their dreams, big or small, some of which will make major © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_1

3

4

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

contributions to the global agenda, including sustainability and social inclusions, and other major breakthrough to push the human race forward. The digital transition is also reshaping and transforming various areas of our society, playing a key role in the creation of new policies, new businesses, and educational models, transforming the industrial economy and the associated job market. This new dynamic world is populated by a homo sapiens digital which accepts digital enhancement as part of everyday life. The deepest and most enduring changes of our age are not technological, but social, economic, cultural, and geographic. This chapter of the book presents an overview of the historic period characterized by the rapid shift to an economy based on information technology, showing how digital technology has rapidly evolved in the last ten years, leading to digitisation and the development of Industry 4.0, moving toward a global society characterised by digital enhancement. The aim is to provide evidence of the importance and the requirement of developing creative abilities as one of the most important human skills to cope with the complexity brought by the digital era and to achieve a Digital Maturity.

1.2

The 4th Industrial Revolution: Technological and Social Changes

The introduction of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) intended as “the technology involving the development, maintenance, and use of computer systems, software, and networks for the processing and distribution of data” (Merriam-Webster 2019), have profoundly contributed to the economic shift characterizing our century. From the traditional industry that the First Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, we moved to a Second Industrial Revolution’s application of science to mass production and manufacturing. Later on, ICTs contributed to the rise of a Third Industrial Revolution and the establishment of an economy based on information technology named the Information Age that constitutes an historic period in the twenty-first century. As a consequence of the introduction of distributed databases in cloud-based infrastructures, information has become a commodity, at the disposal of anyone with access to the Internet and its search engines. The Information Age is indeed characterised by a reversal from information scarcity to information abundance. In 1991, Mark Weiser (Weiser, 1991) published an article in Scientific American called “The computer for the twenty-first century” where he suggested that the most profound technologies are those that disappear into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. Therefore, after the mainframe and the personal desktop computer, the next step of technological evolution will be ubiquitous computing, i.e. a technology that has become so pervasive that it is invisible to us and totally embedded in our lives. Such a disappearance is a fundamental consequence not only of technology but also mainly of human psychology.

1.2 The 4th Industrial Revolution: Technological and Social Changes

5

In their book, Dourish and Bell (2011) argued that we have already entered the era of ubiquitous computing, rather than seeing it as something yet to happen in the future. Indeed, with the current flourishing of devices, sensors, robots, and applications, and all the emerging technologies,1 we have entered a new phase of the Information Age, a phase where the hybridisation between bits and other forms of reality is so deep that it radically changes the human condition in profound ways. This can be defined as a Forth Industrial Revolution, where digital technologies are rapidly changing the way humans create, exchange, and distribute value. This specific phase of technological progress appears to be different from all preceding ones because it actually sees coming into play a new form of machine cognition—such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, big data analytics —giving birth to what has been defined as Post-Information Age. Industry 4.0 has gained major traction in recent years. Driven by big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics, companies are increasingly investing in automation technologies that will enable them to continue to increase efficiencies, and profits, without hiring new employees. (Cohen 2017)

Those emerging digital technologies have the potential to revolutionize all sectors of our society (i.e. healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, entertainment, education, and even art), playing a key role in the creation of new business models and transforming the industrial economy and the associated job market (National Research Council 2008). New roles are emerging in today’s market that were practically inconceivable a decade ago: think about UX designer, social media manager, Uber driver, or drone operator. It certainly opens up a vast horizon of opportunities as well as challenges, all essentially driven by the recording, transmitting, and processing powers of ICTs. From synthetic biochemistry to neuroscience, from the Internet of things to unmanned planetary explorations, from green technologies to new medical treatments, from social media to digital games, from agricultural to financial applications, from economic developments to the energy industry, our activities of discovery, invention, design, control, education, work, socialisation, entertainment, care and so forth would be not only unfeasible but unthinkable in a purely mechanical, historical context. (Floridi 2015, p. 53)

These major digital transformations contribute to the evolution of human beings and human societies. They change skills requirements and, in turn, impact capacity building and skills development for the 21st-century digital economy. According to World Economic Forum—WEF (2016): The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third

1

List of emerging ICTs that are bringing new, ethical concerns includes: affective computing, ambient intelligence, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, future internet, human–machine symbiosis, neuroelectronics, quantum computing, robotics, virtual/augmented reality (The ETICA research project http://www.etica-project.eu/).

6

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed, breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organizations create value and even what it means to be human. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policy-makers and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centred future. The real opportunity is to look beyond technology and find ways to give the greatest number of people the ability to positively impact their families, organizations and communities.

This digital evolution is dramatically altering many aspects of society, including private lives, public administration, industrial structure, and employment, changing the way people work, learn, behave, socialize, and also the skills they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world. Floridi (2015) highlights the relevance of ICTs for the contemporary society by putting these technologies in the context of human evolution. He visualizes three main stages (Fig. 1.1), the first two of which are prehistory, where there are no ICTs and history, where ICTs are present, they record and transmit data, but human societies still depend mainly on other kinds of technologies concerning primary resources and energy. The majority of people today still live historically. The third stage is hyperhistory, where ICTs can record and transmit but, above all, they process data, increasingly autonomously, and human societies become vitally dependent on them and on information as a fundamental resource. In those societies or environments, ICTs and their data processing capabilities are the necessary condition for the maintenance and any further development of societal welfare and personal well-being, as well as overall flourishing. Human beings have become interconnected informational organisms2 (Floridi 2015), and our individual and social well-being depends on technology and on the information that we are able to exchange with others. The contemporary society is structured around networks instead of individual actors and works through a constant flow of information mediated by technology (Castells 2010). There is indeed a shift towards a primacy of interactions, processes, and networks, grounded on a hyperconnectivity that is modifying profoundly the network of individual relationships. Instead of having a small number of close friends living near us, we now may have hundreds of acquaintances living on several continents with whom we currently exchange specialised information about many fields of professional interest or related to any kind of hobby. The pervasive and ubiquitous characteristic of ICTs is also blurring the distinction between humans, machines, and nature. Digital technology is becoming our next nature, a nature that is caused by people and that, as nature does, exists beyond our control (Van Mensvoort and Grievink 2011).

The environment in which human beings now live has been defined as “the infosphere” (Floridi 2013), meaning a global environment ultimately made of information in which biological organisms and engineered artefacts co-exist.

2

1.2 The 4th Industrial Revolution: Technological and Social Changes

7

Fig. 1.1 From prehistory to history (top), relationships between world population and connected devices (bottom). Adapted from Floridi (2015), The Onlife Manifesto

As human beings, we are still reliant on the distinctions between human nature and artefacts, but this distinction actually no longer exists, and we need to adapt soon to this new reality. The interconnections between technology, human cognition, and human life in general will become much more intrinsic, invisible, and impactful. It naturally follows from these major changes in the scale and nature of individual relationships that the social fabric is dramatically evolving.

1.3

From Digital Natives to Digitally Enhanced Society

The Post-Information Age has led to the complete de-structuring of space and time, creating a second online reality. The mutual intersection between the online and offline has created a new “onlife” dimension that is a hyperconnected dimension within which the distinction between reality and virtuality is blurred. In the Post-Information Age, human beings, and the society in general, is living an “onlife” reality. For many years, the delicate relationship between real and virtual has been discussed. They were seen as alternative and opposing dimensions. With the development of smartphones and the increasingly invisible and ubiquitous

8

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

technologies, this gap has been progressively closing, making possible a pervasive convergence between the physical and digital. The pervasiveness of this dimension is so strong that it distorts daily life of each in terms of perception, even before communication and relationships. It makes time elastic and expands living space by intervening in the most hidden folds of everyday life. We can consider it a reality system with two-wheel drive (Baricco 2018), where the individual personality becomes the result of a sum of presences, offline and online, in the real and the virtual world, that react together as chemical substances providing a changing and fluctuating identity. The characteristics of the onlife dimension was previously unimaginable, but a totally new digital generation has been born into it who have never imagined a world without it. Human cognition is embodied as diversified physical and virtual realities that are profoundly influencing the evolution of human beings. With technological and social evolution, also human beings and human skills are co-evolving, exhibiting significant cognitive, behavioural and social changes. First with the advent of the Internet, and now with all the other new advanced digital technologies, human evolution has become ever more disrupted, studied, and observed. More than 20 years ago, researchers, especially from the pedagogical field, started talking about the rise of a ‘Net Generation’ (Tapscott 1998) also called ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001a) or ‘millennials’ (Howe and Strauss 2000). They were defined as the first group to come of age after the arrival of digital technology, bringing with them heightened expectations of immediacy, participation, and transparency. Described as optimistic, team-oriented achievers who are talented with technology and digitally skilled, they exhibit different consumption behaviours, learning preferences, and work styles, compared to previous generations (Bakhshi et al. 2017). Because a new generation of learners has grown up with information and communication technology (ICT) as an integral part of their everyday lives, education must also adapt to the intellectual, social, motivational, and emotional needs of the new generation (Tapscott 1998). In the twenty-first century, there are fundamental changes for these people who are considered to be active experiential learners, proficient in multitasking and dependent on communications technologies for accessing information and for interacting with others (Frand 2000; Oblinger and Oblinger 2005; Prensky 2001a, b; Tapscott 1998). Frand (2000) claimed that this immersion is so complete that young people do not even consider computers ‘technology’ anymore. An important assumption underpinning the claim for a generation of digital natives is that, because of their immersion in technology, young people ‘think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors’ (Prensky 2001a, p. 1). Brown (2000), for example, claims ‘today’s kids are always “multiprocessing”—they do several things simultaneously—listen to music, talk on the cell phone, and use the computer, all at the same time’ (p. 13). It is also argued that

1.3 From Digital Natives to Digitally Enhanced Society

9

digital natives are accustomed to learning at high speed, making random connections, processing visual and dynamic information, and learning through game-based activities (Prensky 2001a). It has been suggested that, because of these factors, young people prefer discovery-based learning that allows them to explore and to actively test their ideas and create knowledge (Brown 2000). Within the literature, an open debate is ongoing about whether these generational differences are due to the introduction of ICTs or a change of mindset related to new social needs and trends. As we move further into the twenty-first century, the concept of the digital native is evolving because we are all growing up and adapting to this era of digital technology and the generational gap is going to be overcome soon. Prensky (2009) suggested that in this century a new distinction can be made in terms of digital wisdom. We can call them digitally enhanced people: he or she accepts digital enhancement as an integral fact of human existence, and he or she is digitally wise, both in the considered way he or she accesses the power of digital enhancements to complement innate abilities and in the way in which he or she uses enhancements to facilitate wiser decision making. (Prensky 2009, p. 4)

Indeed, we are all moving, each at our own speed, toward digital enhancement. Actually, we can say that we are already there because digital enhancement is already available for just about everything we do. Digital tools already extend and enhance our cognitive capabilities in a number of ways, for example: electronic storage enhances memory; digital data-gathering and decision-making tools enhance judgment by enabling us to gather more data than we could on our own, helping us perform more complex analyses than we could unaided. As in the above definition, the concept of digital enhancement is linked with digital wisdom, meaning “the ability to find practical, creative, contextually appropriate, and emotionally satisfying solutions to complicated human problems through the support of computer enhancement” (Prensky 2009, p. 2). Examples of digital wisdom are all around us: people are digitally wise when they take advantage of participative technologies such as collaborative platforms, blogs, and wikis to enlarge their perspectives and those of their audience. Digital wisdom can be, and must be, learned and taught. Indeed, an important role that parents and educators now have is recognizing this need and acting as guides, context providers, and quality controllers by realizing the extent to which the future will be mediated by technology and encouraging their children to use digital technology wisely. A recent investigation by Samuel (2017) shows the different ways in which parents and educators handle their children’ use of technology as they create distinct types3 of young tech users who will soon be entering colleges and workplaces. 3

Three distinct type of young tech users are: Digital orphans: have grown up with a great deal of tech access, but very little guidance. Orphans might end up prioritizing online networks over face-to-face interactions, leading to shaky

10

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

It is therefore essential to guide technological adoption and development from an early age to learn how to take advantage of better opportunities in this transition. The way people relate to technology will shape their professional opportunities, their relationship to authority, and the way they interact with one another. Therefore, “digital wisdom means not just manipulating technology easily or even creatively; it means making wiser decisions because one is enhanced by technology” (Prensky 2009, p. 6). The digitally wise look for cases where technology enhances thinking, understanding, and intuition because it provides additional data that makes them informed, inspired, and supported by digital enhancements. The digitally wise have strong creative abilities in the adoption of digital technology and a wide knowledge of their opportunities. Therefore, in this scenario of transition, creativity has been considered as the essential skill for human survival, especially in the necessary collaboration between human and machine and the ability needed to develop digital wisdom.

1.4

Challenges of Post-information Society: An Imagination Society

The current technological evolution represents for human beings a strong and faster transition compared to the previous ones mainly because it involves a deep transformation of the social fabric. There is a central focus on human evolution as Floridi highlights in defining the Digital Transition as “the societal process arising from the deployment and uptake of ICTs” (Floridi 2015, p. 43). The digital transition involves therefore a combination of transformative digital technologies, tools, processes, and most importantly people, in terms of culture, skills and mindset. There can be no doubt that the exponential growth of new inventions, applications, and solutions in ICTs are deeply impacting the human society and are quickly distancing future generations from ours. According to this vision, ICTs are considered not just tools but rather environmental forces that influence our relationship to ourselves and others, and our

interpersonal skills. Without reflecting on the consequences of technology, they could end up bringing some of the worst of the Internet into offline society, instead of actively working to elevate on- and offline life. Digital exiles: have been raised with minimal technology. This might lead to conflict because the rest of society has embraced digitalization. This might also lead to a rejection of technology. Digital heirs: have impressive tech skills because their adult mentors have encouraged and directed their tech education, enrolling them in classes and conversing with them about being responsible Internet users. Due to their higher levels of tech understanding, heirs could face challenges in dealing with their less knowledgeable peers, playing a role in mentoring the rest of their generation to use and shape the Internet.

1.4 Challenges of Post-information Society: An Imagination Society

11

conception and interaction with the world (Floridi 2015). The digital transition acts as a huge accelerator of this modification. From the contextual analysis, there emerges how our existence will be related one-to-one with our ability to generate ideas to successfully exploit the opportunities that technology offers us. It is difficult to accurately foresee what kind of society the ongoing digital revolution will create, but it is important to be key players in the revolution, to indicate a direction, and to work with a diverse range of people to create the future. Utilization of data and AI will open up many new possibilities, and it is fundamental to understand what to use these technologies for and to achieve a high degree of convergence between the virtual space and the physical space to provide a human-centred infrastructure for social prosperity.4 Therefore, creativity has been recognized as an important human ability that will shape the society of the future. In the future, humans will require imagination to change the world and creativity to materialize their ideas. People are expected to exercise rich imaginations to identify a variety of needs and challenges scattered throughout society and scenarios to solve them, as well as creativity to realize such solutions while making use of digital technologies and data. The Post-Information Society will be an Imagination Society (Keidanren 2018), where digital transformation combines with the imagination and creativity of diverse people to bring about “problem solving” and “value creation” that lead us to sustainable development. Creativity is the key to shaping the future, and it is important to exercise our imaginations for the future of earth and humankind and recreate the world for the better. It is a concept that can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nation. The main Post-Information challenges for design that arise from this analysis is to support the development of human creative abilities to help people in leading the technological development of our age, achieving digital maturity5 (Kane 2017). Hence the responsibility to study, understand, and develop creativity abilities and how to digitally enhance them becomes a sort of multidisciplinary mission. Therefore, understanding how human change in relation to technological advances poses threats and opportunities for creative development is fundamental for developing new creativity stimuli for the digitally enhanced generation. I believe that only by understanding the cultural changes and values of the generational shift that has occurred can we understand the changes in our society and begin to shape our future more intelligently. Therefore, it is fundamental to investigate how the digital transition impacts on the several dimensions of human beings. This will be discussed in Chap. 2.

4

This idea is also at the fundamental of the Japanese concept of Society 5.0 (Harayama 2017). Digital maturity refers to a continuous and ongoing process of adaptation to a changing digital landscape. Digital maturity draws on a psychological definition of “maturity” that is based upon a learned ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner.

5

12

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

1.5

Toward a Digital Maturity: Creativity as a Driving Skill

In this scenario of transition, creativity has been rightly recognized as the key to economic growth and social transformation (Florida 2014) since it represents the intangible substrate for innovation (Kozbelt et al. 2010). Creativity is the fundamental skill to nurture the achievement of digital maturity since it is a distinct human ability in a scenario where human and machine become collaborators (Fig. 1.2). It is already clear that, in the short term, the probability of a particular job being shifted from humans to computers is inversely proportional to its intrinsic creativity content (Bakhshi et al. 2015). Any form of routine work, or in extreme, any type of employee position, will progressively lose its appeal or rationale for humans in the future. In the digital transition, “our creativity-driven role will be to generate surprising ideas, and then carry them on to realization to produce tangible or intangible goods or services. No one should be denied the right to take advantage of artificially intelligent systems.” (Corazza 2017, p. 603). Therefore, creativity must be motivated and nurtured in a multitude of ways, by creative people themselves and in the places and environments in which we live. In this transition, a new social class is growing with an understanding of creativity as a fundamental key factor for every kind of work, from business, to education, health care, and law, and from art to design and engineering or some other profession. The rise of the Creative Economy has had a profound effect on the sorting of people into social groups or classes, changing the composition of existing ones and creating new ones. (Florida 2012, p. 35)

Fig. 1.2 Co-evolution between society and human skills. Adapted from Corazza (2017)

1.5 Toward a Digital Maturity: Creativity as a Driving Skill

13

Society is changing norms and values, influencing the everyday lifestyles, and promoting creativity as the driving force of economic growth. Indeed, at the root of these social and economic transformations, one of the main driving forces has been considered the rise of human creativity. It wasn’t just the Internet, or the rise of new technologies, or even globalization that were upending our jobs, lives, and communities, though all those things were important. Beneath the surface, unnoticed by many, an even deeper force was at work—the rise of creativity as a fundamental economic driver, and the rise of a new social class, the Creative Class. (Florida 2012, p. VII)

The ascent of creativity as an economic force over the past few decades has brought new economic and social forms and trends into existence, from the ascent of new industries and businesses to changes in the way we live and work, extending even into the desires and expectations that structure our everyday lives. This new creative society is the norm-setting society of our time, very different from those of more traditional society. Individuality, self-expression, and openness to difference are favoured over the homogeneity, conformity, and “fitting in” that defined the previous age of large-scale industry and organization (Florida 2012). The democratisation of digital tools and the rise of a participatory culture are supporting our creative impulse to be unleashed on an unprecedented scale. This new social class includes people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music, and entertainment—everyone whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. But, around this core, there is a growing broader group of creative professionals in business and finance, law, health care, and related fields. These people engage every day in complex problem solving that involves a great deal of independent judgement and requires high levels of education or human capital. The digital enhancement will bring their performances to a higher levels; therefore, it is fundamental for everybody in society to develop creativity abilities to be able to adopt digital technologies and data to lead diverse lifestyles and pursue happiness in their own ways, reaching a digitally mature imagination society.

References Bakhshi, H., Frey, C.B., Osborne, M.: Creativity versus robots. In: The Creative Economy and the Future of Employment. Nesta, London (2015) Bakhshi, H., Downing, J., Osborne, M., Schneider, P.: The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030. Pearson and Nesta, London (2017) Baricco, A.: The Game. Einaudi, Torino (2018) Brown, J. S.: Growing up digital: how the web changes work, education, and the ways people learn. Change: The Mag. Higher Learn. 32(2), 11–20 (2000) Castells, M.: The information age: economy, society and culture. In: Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn. Wiley Blackwell, Oxford (2010) Cohen, B.: Post-capitalist Entrepreneurship. Startups for the 99%. Taylor & Francis, New York (2017)

14

1 Socio-Technical Dimension: Beyond a Digital Transition

Corazza, G.E.: Organic creativity for well-being in the post-information society. Europe’s J. Psychol. 13(4), 599–605 (2017) Dourish, P., Bell, G.: Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge, US (2011) Florida, R.: The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisted. Basic Books, New York (2014) Floridi, L.: The Onlife Manifesto. Springer-Verlag GmbH, London (2015) Frand, J.L.: The information-age mindset: changes in students and implications for higher education. EDUCAUSE Rev. 35(5), 15–24 (2000) Howe, N., Strauss, W.: Millennials. Rising the next great generation. In: Matson, R.J. (ed.) Cartoons. Vintage Books, New York (2000) Kane, C.: Digital maturity, not digital transformation. MIT Sloan Management Review. Retrieved from https://sloanreview.mit.edu (2017). Last accessed 20 Dec 2019 Keidanren: Society 5.0. Co-creating the future. (E-Booklet). Retrieved from https://www. keidanren.or.jp/en/policy/2018/095_booklet.pdf (2018). Last accessed 20 Dec 2019 Kozbelt, A., Beghetto, R.A., Runco, M.A.: Theories of creativity. In: Kaufman, J.C., Sternberg, R.J. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2010) Merriam-Webster.: Information technology. In: Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information%20technology. Last accessed 20 Dec 2019 National Research Council.: Research on Future Skill Demands: A Workshop Summary. National Academies Press, Washington DC (2008) Oblinger, D.G., Oblinger, J.L.: Is it age or IT: first steps toward understanding the net generation. In: Oblinger, D.G., Oblinger J.L., (eds.) Educating the Net Generation. Educause, Washington, DC (2005) Prensky, M.: Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the Horizon 9(5), 1–6 (2001a) Prensky, M.: Digital natives, digital immigrants part 2: do they really think differently? On the Horizon 9(6), 1–6 (2001b) Prensky, M.: H. sapiens digital: from digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Inno.: J. Online Educ. 5(3), 1–9 (2009) Samuel, A.: Forget digital natives. Here’s how kids are really using the internet. Retrieved from https://ideas.ted.com/opinion-forget-digital-natives-heres-how-kids-are-really-using-the-internet/ (2017). Last accessed 20 Dec 2019 Tapscott, D.: Growing Up Digital. The Rise of the Net Generation. McGraw Hill, New York (1998) Van Mensvoort, K., Grievink, H.: Next Nature Book. Actar, Barcelona (2011) Weiser, M.: The computer for the 21st century. Sci. Am., 94–104 (1991) World Economic Forum.: The future of jobs: employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution (Report), Switzerland. Retrieved from http://www.weforum.org/ reports/the-future-of-jobs (2016). Last accessed 20 Dec 2019

Chapter 2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between Humans and Digital Technologies

2.1

Introduction

With the evolution of technology, society and human skills evolve accordingly. Indeed, throughout human evolution, our cognitive systems have been altered by the advent of technological inventions such as primitive tools, spoken language, and writing. About 30 years ago, the advent of the Internet, as well as the contemporaneous mass adoption of other digital technologies, have profoundly transformed our thoughts and behaviours and probably our brain, which is generally understood to be highly plastic, continually adapting to the input it receives (Thompson 2013). According to this idea, we could probably assume that the brains of digitally enhanced people who interact with digital technology frequently will probably be organized and structured differently than the brains of the previous generation. Neuroscientists are widely studying the impact of the Internet environment on our cognitive behaviours and structures—as it has long been the most widespread and most intensively used information technology. Human evolution has been more than ever disruptive, studied, and observed. The digital transition is profoundly changing also other dimensions of the human condition, modifying who we are, how we socialize, and how we conceive of and interact with the real world. This chapter of the book deeply explores the co-evolution of human dimensions. It highlights the findings from the literature in various fields—education, psychology, neuroscience, sociology—that describes how the digital era and its technologies have influenced the social, behavioural, and cognitive development of individuals who are growing up with digital habits (TVs, cell phones, video games, etc.). Starting from cognitive changes and brain modifications, as well as the modification in the learning style of the digitally enhanced generation, the chapter review the new opportunities provided by the democratization of digital technologies. The © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_2

15

16

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

hyper connection that has characterized the digital transition is also contributing to the creation of a participatory culture at a global level which represents one of the main traits of this transition and a strong indicator of a growing digital culture. The human being, at the centre of the investigation, has been breaking down into its main dimensions encompassing the major aspects that have been impacted and modified by the digital transition. Understanding how the human being is co-evolving with digital technology becomes a fundamental step for analysing how creativity is evolving too.

2.2

Digitally Enhanced People: Evolving Multiple Human Components

The human person is a multi-dimensional being (Huitt 2012). We can think of ‘person’ as a focal point, where all these dimensions converge. The person is a unity, but there are several ways of observing this unity according to its several dimensions. Being aware of the dimensions or aspects of the person is therefore fundamental to tracking and observing the changes that the digital transition has brought. In the psychological literature, there are several frameworks (Bandura 1986; Eysenck 1947; Thompson 1971 as cited by Huitt 2012) that describe the various components of the human being. According to Huitt (2012), these components can be clustered in three main areas: mind, body, and spirit. These relationships would be represented as a whole (the person), with three main parts (body, mind, spirit). Mind is viewed as a result of the functioning of the brain. It includes an individual’s thinking, feeling, and will. Farthing (1992) defined mind as “the functioning of the brain to process information and control action in a flexible and adaptive manner” (p. 5). Body is related to the physical dimension of the human being where “physical” means wellness (Sparks and Todd 1997). Spirit is related to humankind’s spiritual nature (Huitt 2000). It includes how human beings relate to themselves and to others, how they approach the unknowns of life, and how human beings define and relate to the sacred. Within these three main areas that approach systematically the study of human being (Huitt 2012), five major components of the individual emerge: the cognitive component (i.e. perceives, stores, processes, and retrieves information), the affective component (i.e. can modify perceptions and thoughts before and after they are processed cognitively), the conative component (i.e. directs and manages input and output functioning), the spiritual component (i.e. how human beings relate to themselves, to others, and approach the unknowns of life, how human beings define and relate to the sacred), and the behavioural system (i.e. actions of the organism and output of the individual) (Fig. 2.1).

2.2 Digitally Enhanced People: Evolving Multiple Human Components

17

Fig. 2.1 Human as a multi-dimensional being composed of five components distributed in three main areas

As we will see in Chap. 4, most of these human components determine the creative potential of each individual, becoming therefore fundamental within the creative process. For this reason, it is essential to investigate how the digital transition is impacting and changing these components to later define how these changes affect the individual creative potential and the creative process, accordingly. The next three sections describe in detail some impacts that the digital evolution is bringing to the various, multiple components of human beings, identifying the most discussed traits of the digitally enhanced generation. Those impacts are intended as the effects caused by a diffused and widespread adoption of ICT technologies by human beings and, more broadly, by the society. The observed impacts represent the most discussed among the one identified in the sociological, psychological, and pedagogical literature. They cannot be considered as an exhaustive collection, but rather as an initial cluster of recognized effects present in the literature.

2.3

Alteration of Modern Minds

This section highlights some of the main impacts identified on the cognitive component of the human being. Those impacts address the cognitive structures, processes, and the information-storage ability that are involved when performing a creative activity.

18

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

Changes of reading and information-processing abilities Several authors (Abelson et al. 2008; Carr 2008; Jackson 2008; Keen 2007; Siegel 2008) have argued that digitally enhanced people have not the ability to maintain the same focus and attention of previous generations when reading traditional text and when faced with traditional forms of learning. According to the review done by Loh and Kanai (2016), the hypertext environments and the easier retrieval of online information result in a reduced learning effort causing a shift toward a “shallow mode” of learning characterized by quick scanning, reduced contemplation, and memory consolidation. The increased presence of hypertext environments reduces the cognitive resources required for deep processing, and the ease of online information retrieval reduces the need for deep processing to commit information to memory. This results in a reduced learning effort as information can be easily retrieved later or in any moment. However, relying on technology as an external memory source can strategically free up additional cognitive resources for other prioritized operations. Young people today spend much less time reading for leisure than ever before. In interrupting the development of deep-reading skills, this shift toward shallow information processing may affect brain circuitry necessary for these skills. Technological advances have brought many new ways of learning into the classroom and the home. Online courses are available for high-schoolers, college students, and adults. Search engines such as Yahoo and Google provide vast resources for research on almost every subject. Small and Vorgan (2008, pp. 4–6) maintain that Internet overexposure can alter brain regions that control mood and thought, with the potential for deleterious results. However, the opposite view maintains that the brain is elastic enough to recover quickly from overexposure (Rubin 2012, p. 254). The recovery is supported by the way in which information is presented on a screen and by the possibility of intermittent short period of sleep (Mednick and Ehrman 2002). Moreover, the everyday use of computers stimulates areas of the brain that reading in the traditional sense doesn’t (Small and Vorgan 2008). There is evidence that the Internet searching experience can result in neural changes, but more research is required to reveal the exact mechanisms that are affected by online information processing. Increase of the amount of (available) information to manage Internet technologies have made a huge amount of information easily available to everyone at any moment, with a very little effort. One of the effects, widely discussed today, is the cognitive overload of information caused by the just-mentioned hypertext environment, combined with the reduction of deep informationprocessing abilities. This effect, increasingly widespread if one considers the fact that devices are now seen as human prostheses, requires training in the collection and management of information.

2.3 Alteration of Modern Minds

19

However, different views are present in the literature that promote the advantage of the availability of a large body of information. Indeed, this allows the faster integration of the multiple sources of information rapidly available to be processed. The bombardment of digital stimulation on developing minds has taught the new digital generation to respond faster, but they encode information differently than the way older minds do (Small and Vorgan 2008). Altering our neural networks and synaptic connections through activities such as email, video games, search engine, or other technological experiences does sharpen some cognitive abilities. We can learn to react more quickly to visual stimuli and develop a better ability to sift through large amounts of information rapidly and decide what is important and what is not. Our mental filters basically learn how to shift into overdrive. In this way, we are able to cope with the massive amounts of information appearing and disappearing on our mental screens from moment to moment, analysing them and almost instantaneously deciding on a go or no-go action. Initially, the daily blitz of data that bombards us can create a form of attention deficit, but our brains are able to adapt in a way that promotes rapid information processing. Increase of multitasking behaviours Internet technologies also greatly facilitate multitasking behaviours (Carrier et al. 2009; Rideout et al. 2010, as cited by Loh and Kanai 2016, p. 5) that have been linked with increased distractibility and reduced learning, especially in the classroom, but in better integration of multiple sources of information. Multitasking originally referred to a computer’s ability to carry out several tasks simultaneously, but today is also used to describe a condition wherein people juggle multiple tasks simultaneously, as opposed to completing one task before moving on to another task in a linear fashion (Small and Vorgan 2008). Digitally enhanced people love to multitask, and they are good at it. They simultaneously read a book, while instant messaging with friends and listening to music. As mentioned before, there is evidence in the literature that too much multitasking can lead not only to increased stress and attention deficits but also to a decline in work efficiency. Multitasking can result in a loss of concentration and cognitive ‘overload’ as the brain shifts between competing stimuli (Rubinstein et al. 2001; Sweller 1988, as cited by Bennet et al. 2008, p. 779). Indeed, the competing simultaneous tasks often provide a superficial view of the information being presented rather than in-depth understanding. Researchers (Shapiro and Niederhauser 2004; Moos and Marroquin 2010; Carrier et al. 2015; Ie et al. 2012; Rosen et al. 2011, as cited by Loh and Kanai 2016, p. 5) have noted the importance of motivation and positive affect in moderating the distractibility sparked by Internet technology. An interesting finding is that multitasking with action video games can produce improvements in attention abilities, suggesting that exposure to different forms of multitasking can lead to different cognitive effects.

20

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

Another impact similar to multitasking is the state of continuous partial attention that the digital evolution has plunged us into. This has been described as continually staying busy, moving from one thing to another while never truly focusing on anything. Continuous partial attention differs from multitasking because the activities don’t have a purpose, but individuals can look for an opportunity for any type of contact at every given moment (i.e. virtual chat, keeping tabs on active contact lists, scrolling social networks, etc.). This can raise the risk of losing personal touch with our real-life relationships and augment the state of stress, while diminishing the time to reflect, contemplate, or make thoughtful decisions (Loh and Kanai 2016). Although, as the modern brain continues to evolve, some attention skills improve, mental response times sharpen, and the performance of many brain tasks becomes more efficient (Small and Vorgan 2008). These new brain proficiencies will probably be even greater in future generations, so they will improve the ability to multitask without making errors. Needs of new cognitive skills In the digital-transition era, we are witnessing assisting at a transformation of the industrial economy and consequently of employment, redefining an evolved concept of learning and work. There is a strong demand for a set of new skills to master new digital devices and new technologies and to face the complexity brought by this transition. Future citizens will have to make a lot more decisions than they do today, more frequently, and a set of skills, both hard and soft, is fundamental to face a continuous and ever-changing environment (Sahin 2009). They are defined as digital skills or 21st-century skills and include not only the abilities to use digital devices, basic technical skills in the areas of software development, management of technological devices, and development of sensors-based automated systems, but also a set of soft and cognitive skills such as critical thinking, creativity, complex problem solving, collaboration abilities, and socio-emotional skills (The Partnership of 21st Century Skills 2008). They enable people to create and share digital content but also to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems for effective and creative self-fulfilment in life, learning, work, and social activities at large, taking advantage of digital technologies’ potentialities. The development of such skills represents today a major challenge for companies, schools, and public authorities (European Council 2006). The digital generation has defined a new culture of communication, and people of this generation are rapidly developing these technological, social, and communication skills and the corresponding neural networks that control them. Those who are most fit in these social skills will have an adaptive advantage. Therefore, it has become important to learn and train them by fostering new kinds of applications where people having different skillsets and mindsets could work together.

2.4 Digital Technology, Emotion, and Behaviour

2.4

21

Digital Technology, Emotion, and Behaviour

This section highlights some of the main impacts identified on the affective, conative, and behavioural components of human beings. Those impacts are mainly addressed by the physical and virtual spaces and the tools and materials adopted by human when carrying out an action. New opportunities and spaces for creative activity The democratization of some digital technologies (i.e. 3D printing, laser cutting machines, CNC machines, etc.) are enabling new ways of engagement and participation for the individual, facilitating new forms of expression. Indeed, in contrast to the conception of consumers or, more generally, people as passive receivers, the digital transition has its emphasis on “doing” and the active roles. Therefore, the digital transition provides opportunities for fostering creativity, creative agency, and creative opportunities to engage with technology. Human beings today have access to sophisticated tools for rich media content creation, the sharing of ideas, discussion, and distribution (Zagalo and Branco 2015). Digital technologies enable the democratisation of activities and processes in many ways: giving people independence and self-reliance, encouraging the wider dissemination and adoption of creative behaviour, providing an opportunity to create more personal meaning in their own environments or self-identity, and opening up previously gendered or class-bound activities to all (Atkinson 2006). Making can promote confidence, and many cases in this field emphasize this point. Technology Will Save Us, for example, is a company that makes Do-It-Yourself (DIY) kits to make technology accessible and understandable to the young generation. They are interested in promoting confidence with technology, practicing one’s own creative potential, and assessing confidence with the products they create. The digital transition is also providing new spaces for creative activity, such as FabLabs,1 makerspaces,2 and similar collaborative open-workshop environments that provide affordable ‘messy’ studio space for individual self-employed practitioners to get on with their work. Makerspaces, open workshops, and collaborative working spaces can also provide a valuable social and business network, promoting knowledge transfer and business contacts, while directly providing facilities.

1

Makerspace structured according to a specific model of DIY, as proposed by the MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms https://www.fablabs.io/. 2 Community-operated physical site that affords sharing of tools, resources, and knowledge motivated by maker culture, revealing specific ways of creation, collaboration, and learning.

22

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

Promote well-being and personal satisfaction In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential role that digital technologies can play in promoting well-being and in inducing and regulating human psychophysiological states (Triberti et al. 2018). These activities often aim to develop human–machine interfaces to improve human factors such as mental health, human relations, and empathy. Immersive interactive technologies, such as Virtual Reality, could serve in a source to elicit positive changes in users, for example, by providing experiences that guide the user closer to understanding the self (Kitson et al. 2018). The #BeFearless campaign by Samsung relies on this idea and aims to help millennials in fighting and overcoming common fears—such as public speaking, heights, etc.—by facing and training in a VR environment. In this era, motivation is an aspect that appears to be more than ever necessary to activate peoples’ interest in a challenge, project, or a community. Motivational aspects are believed to be crucial also for maintaining an active role over time and persevering to overcome the difficulties related to self-organization, use of spare time, and social interactions in collaborations. Of particular importance are the rewarding sensations of being with others, and the interest in generating a positive social impact. Indeed, an important motivational aspect of the digital era is the sense of belonging to a community: people take part because they feel part of a larger community made up of people who share similar interests. People have the possibility to get to know other like-minded people and build up a network (IDEActivity 2017). But it is not all roses. The Internet environment can offer users a highly stimulating and rewarding experience. Users receive pleasurable returns at unpredictable frequencies (e.g. the occurrences of Facebook “likes,” YouTube “views,” etc.) that could influence the reward-processing mechanisms in our mind. The mechanisms of rewarding (Young 1998; Greenfield 2011) offered by Internet environment have altered the brain networks involved in self-control and reward-processing, with a potentially dangerous increase of Internet-related addictive behaviours. Support and improvement of human performance Many of the new disruptive digital technologies, specifically Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, as well as Big Data and predictive analytics, are going to play a crucial role in the way humans perform creative activities, especially in decision-making processes. Prototyping boards (e.g. Arduino,3 Raspberry PI,4 etc.) and 3D printers/3D scanners can enable new types of applications. Data visualisation software enables synthesis of complex phenomena in few visual charts. Social networking tools make possible creating and developing a network of collaborators to support activities.

3 4

www.arduino.cc. www.raspberrypi.org.

2.4 Digital Technology, Emotion, and Behaviour

23

In a business context, for example, new digital tools are transforming how customers are identified, products are advertised, conflicts are solved, and organizations are managed and coordinated. Data-driven technologies will contribute to solutions to the global challenges as defined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).5 These digital tools can be considered as collaborators that support the human being in performing activities faster, better, and more efficiently than can ever be done alone. They can support human activities in many ways by, for example, managing instructions, as in the case of objects produced by 3D printers from 3D-CAD data files, where tools can transfer, store, and process manufacturing instructions to produce objects. Technological tools can create distributed processing and control systems, as in the case of “smart objects”, possibly as parts of Internet of Things systems, in which the components can automatically acquire information from their physical environment and exploit it to contextually operate to modify the environment. Live in two interconnected realities The digital realm is an environment where online and offline activities meld and morph within distributed networks afforded by mobile devices, social media, and ICTs (IDEActivity 2017). The digital evolution has led to the complete destructuring of space and time, creating a new hybrid on life dimension that blurred distinction between reality and virtuality. Therefore, a human being is embodied into diversified physical and virtual realities that require a new mindset to exploit the opportunities and possibilities it offers that, in real life, don’t exist. The new generation already accepts and surfs this new reality while becoming dependent on it for accessing information, acquiring knowledge from distributed sources, communicating with friends, and sharing and collecting insights contemporaneously from a variety of people across the world. The pervasive and ubiquitous characteristic of ICTs is blurring the distinction between human, machines, and nature. The technological medium is not considered technology anymore, but it becomes the door for accessing new exciting and different experiences that frequently drive our behaviour. Therefore, especially the digital generation find the latest technology to be so enticing, so stimulating, and so much fun. In general, people of all ages are drawn in and fascinated by high-tech advances. Our environment’s incessant digital bombardment has caused young brains to evolve in such a way that each technological invention has an almost irresistible draw (Small and Vorgan 2008).

5

UN Global Working Group (GWG) on Big Data and its Task Teams http://www.stats.gov.cn/ english/pdf/202010/P020201012399997943871.pdf.

24

2.5

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

A Global Hyperconnected Community

This section highlights some of the main identified impacts on the behavioural components of the human being and, in particular, the relational and social sphere that intervene when communicating and collaborating with other individuals on creative activities. Organization in “creative” communities around shared projects and objectives Digital technology can break down geographical borders enabling an increased and widespread connectivity among individuals who support each other in “creative communities”, i.e. groups of people who share common interests, vision, and ethical values and cooperatively invent, enhance, and manage innovative solutions for new ways of living (Manzini 2015). This is an example of commons-based peer production, whereby “large groups of individuals co-operate effectively to provide information, knowledge or cultural goods without relying on either market pricing or managerial hierarchies to co-ordinate their common enterprise” (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006, p. 394). It has led to several phenomena, initiatives, and communities (e.g., open source, peer-to-peer, etc.) emerging with the aim of contributing to a more community-oriented society. Peer production has been envisaged as “an opportunity for more people to engage in practices that permit them to exhibit and experience virtuous behavior” (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006, p. 394). The members of the community, in which everyone is a peer, are active users who share ideas, knowledge, skills, spaces, and tools. This can result in the creation of new ways of collaborating and the growth of shared knowledge that supports the global expansion of various local communities’ ideas and projects (IDEActivity 2017). This allows for the creation of a global network of individuals and communities who share problems and issues and grow together. ICT, web platforms, online forums, and social media have facilitated the interaction and spreading of groups who collaborate on a wider scale, often at a global level, for shared purposes, across time and space (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006). The widespread availability of networked digital information processors and the interest to share knowledge have created a new dimension in which the person can be a group, a class, a community of practice, a company, an industrial cluster, or the society as such. The transdisciplinary collaboration among people is believed to be the most significant element characterising the evolution of traditional technologies toward the digital one. Diffusion of a collaborative mindset and a sharing attitude The hyper connection characterising the digital transition is facilitating the consolidation of a participatory culture that affects different aspects of human life. This is leading to the creation of a collaborative mindset in which the learning process is not an individual one, but rather a shared practice among the educational or working community. There is a growing understanding of the potential to solve

2.5 A Global Hyperconnected Community

25

problems through sharing and through open collaborations and via online help, often within specific communities. This creates the opportunity to come up with ideas on how to create a basis for a collaborative way of working, overcome individual structures, spaces, evaluation, and so on. The individuals actively take part in the collaborative construction of an ecosystem in which sharing represents a new way of operating and a new attitude. Phenomena such as crowdsourcing are arising from this transition, leveraging mass collaboration and participation to deliver data and information in a more distributed and comprehensive manner. This is also making possible new sharing of digital technologies that open opportunities for more people to engage in collaborative creative activities (i.e. OpenIDEO, Instructubles, Public Lab) and new forms of co-creation for the realization of a project. New technological tools are specifically created and designed to support collaboration between people where “sharing and participating” becomes the enabling factors (IDEActivity 2017). Thanks to digitally enabled communications, particularly the Internet, people can disseminate knowledge and skills and communicate projects and plans, or build support for initiatives worldwide through dedicated online platforms and networks. Groups of people working together in “superminds” (Malone 2018) have been responsible for almost all human endeavors in business, government, science, and beyond. And these examples of collective intelligence are about to get much smarter, especially with the combination of computer technologies. Today, plenty of tools are enabling teams of people, even if sparse, to come together electronically to the easily work together, generating and sharing ideas in brainstorming, designs or expertise to facilitate mutual support and hence “turbocharge” their projects. Technological advancements are also providing new immersive environment, such as the microworld (Cabanero‐Johnson and Berge 2009), in which each member of the team can create his or her own invented character, when working with the team. Computer technologies indeed can help people work together and design together where collaboration plays an increasing role in design projects that require expertise across a wide range of domains. Even though communication technology enables profoundly new forms of collaborative work, Olson and Olson (2001) have found that collaborative design can still be difficult to support at a distance. In addition, critical stages of collaborative work, such as dealing with ill-defined problems or establishing mutual trust, appear to require some level of face-to-face interaction. Brown and Duguid (2000) present a similar argument: “Digital technologies are adept at maintaining communities already formed. They are less good at making them” (p. 226). In contrast, distributed teams of collaborators are able to carry out effective work and indeed to evolve totally new ways of working that have a great impact on their activities (Olson and Olson 2001). Open-source software communities provide an example of successful collaboration on a large scale mediated by computational media (Fischer et al. 2007; Raymond and Young 2001; Scharff 2002).

26

2

The Human Dimensions: Co-evolution Between …

References Abelson, H., Ledeen, K., Lewis, H.: Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion. Addison-Wesley, Upper Saddle River, NJ (2008) Atkinson, P.: Do it yourself: democracy and design. J. Des. Hist. 19(1), 1–10 (2006) Bandura, A.: Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social-Cognitive Theory. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (1986) Benkler, Y., Nissenbaum, H.: Commons-based peer production and virtue. J. Polit. Philos. 14(4), 394–419 (2006) Bennett, S., Maton, K., Kervin, L.: The, “digital natives” debate: a critical review of the evidence. Br. J. Edu. Technol. 39(5), 775–786 (2008) Brown, J.S., Duguid, P.: The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA (2000) Cabanero-Johnson, P.S., Berge, Z.: Digital natives: back to the future of microworlds in a corporate learning organization. Learn. Organ. 16(4), 290–297 (2009) Carr, N.: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. Norton & Company, New York (2008) Carrier, L.M., Rosen, L.D., Cheever, N.A., Lim, A.F.: Causes, effects, and practicalities of everyday multitasking. Dev. Rev. 35, 64–78 (2015) Carrier, L.M., Cheever, N.A., Rosen, L.D., Benitez, S., Chang J.: Multitasking across generations: multitasking choices and difficulty ratings in three generations of Americans, Comput Hum Behav, 25, 483–489 (2009) European Council: Recommendation of the European Parliament and the Official Journal of the European Union, pp. 10–18. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ. do?uri=OJ:L:2006:394:0010:0018:en:PDF (2006). Last accessed 19 Dec 2019 Eysenck, H.: Dimensions of Personality. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1947) Farthing, G.W.: The Psychology of Consciousness. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (1992) Fischer, G., Rohde, M., Wulf, V.: Community-based learning: the core competency of residential, research-based universities. Comput. Supp. Collab. Learn. 2(1), 9–40 (2007) Greenfield, D.: The addictive properties of internet usage. In: Young, K.S., de Arbeu, C.N. (eds.) Internet Addiction: a Handbook and Guide to Evaluation and Treatment, pp. 135–53. Hoboken, John Wiley, NJ (2011) Huitt, W.: The spiritual nature of a human being. In: Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/ spiritual/spirit.html (2000). Last accessed 15 Dec 2020 Huitt, W.: A systems approach to the study of human behavior. In: Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA. Retrieved from http://www. edpsycinteractive.org/materials/sysmdlo.html (2012). Last accessed 15 Dec 2020 IDEActivity: co-design in the DiDIY scenario. Toolkit and guidelines. Retrieved from http://www. ideactivity.polimi.it/toolkits/ (2017) Ie, A., Haller, C.S., Langer, E.J., Courvoisier, D.S.: Mindful multitasking: the relationship between mindful flexibility and media multitasking. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28, 1526–1532 (2012) Jackson, M.: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Prometheus, Amherst, NY (2008) Keen, A.: The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User Generated Media are Destroying Our Economy. Doubleday, New York (2007) Kitson, A., Prpa, M., Riecke, B.E.: Immersive interactive technologies for positive change: a scoping review and design considerations. Front. Psychol. 9, 1354 (2018) Loh, K.K., Kanai, R.: How has the internet reshaped human cognition? Neuroscientist 22(5), 506–520 (2016) Malone, T.W.: Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together. Little, Brown (2018)

References

27

Manzini, E.: Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. The MIT Press, Cambridge, US (2015) Mednick, S., Ehrman, M.: Take a Nap! Change Your Life. Workman, New York (2002) Moos, D.C., Marroquin, E.: Multimedia, hypermedia, and hypertext: motivation considered and reconsidered. Comput. Hum. Behav. 26, 265–276 (2010) Olson, G.M., Olson, J.S.: Distance matters. In: Carroll, J.M. (ed.) Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, pp. 397–417. ACM Press, New York (2001) Raymond, E.S., Young, B.: The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. O’Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA (2001) Rideout V.J., Foehr U.G., Roberts D.F.: Generation M2: media in the lives of 8-to 18-year-olds. Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, CA (2010) Rosen, L.D., Lim, A.F., Carrier, L.M.: An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: educational implications and strategies too enhance learning. Psicologia Educativa 17(2), 163–177 (2011) Rubin, J.: Technology’s impact on the creative potential of youth. Creat. Res. J. 24(2–3), 252–256 (2012) Rubinstein, J., Meyer, D. E. Evans, J. E.: Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 27 (4), 763–797 (2001) Sahin, M.C.: Instructional design principles for 21st century learning skills. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 1(1), 1464–1468 (2009) Scharff, E.: Open source software, a conceptual framework for collaborative artifact and knowledge construction, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder (2002) Shapiro, A., Niederhauser, D.: Learning from hypertext: research issues and findings. In: Jonassen, D.H. (ed.) Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 2nd edn., pp. 605–620. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ (2004) Siegel, L.: Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. Siegal & Grau, New York (2008) Small, G., Vorgan, G.: IBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. HarperCollins, New York (2008) Sparks, Y., Todd, M.: Physical development: an overview. In: Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA (1997) Sweller, J.: Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning. Cogn. Sci. 12(2), 257–285 (1988) The Partnership of 21st Century Skills: 21st Century Skills, Education and Competitiveness. A Resource and Policy Guide (2008) Thompson, P.: The digital natives as learners: technology use patterns and approaches to learning. Comput. Educ. 65, 12–33 (2013) Thompson, R.: A systems approach to instruction. Linnet Books, Hamden, CT (1971) Triberti, S., Brivio, E., Galimberti, C.: On social presence: theories, methodologies, and guidelines for the innovative contexts of computer-mediated learning. In: Enhancing Social Presence in Online Learning Environments, pp. 20–41. IGI Global (2018) Young, K.S.: Internet addiction: the emergence of a new clinical disorder. CyberPsychol. Behav. 1, 237–244 (1998) Zagalo, N., Branco, P.: Creativity in the Digital Age. Springer-Verlag, London (2015)

Chapter 3

Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

3.1

Introduction

With the world rapidly changing, creativity has become more fundamental than ever before. We live in a society where those who do not creatively innovate risk failure in any of several domains of life. With the growth of computational power of machines and the development of Artificial Intelligent systems, the centrality of humans in the future will strongly rely on their creativity skills that are therefore transforming from a sort of scientific singularity reserved to a few talented individuals to an essential ability for the entire human species. According to Corazza (2017), creativity now will not only be accessible to everyone, but it will essentially be the prime skill and talent for all human beings. Therefore, it is fundamental to deeply understand the creativity phenomenon in all its multifaceted aspects, how it is evolving in the digital transition, and how it is possible to educate people to develop their creative thinking abilities and spread its practical application in all domains of knowledge. The third chapter aims to show the variegated scenario of creativity definitions and the evolution of modern creativity studies, providing an overview of the various approaches and perspectives to the study of creativity, from the individual to the sociocultural and distributed perspectives emerging with the advent and spread of ICTs. The chapter highlights the requirements emerging from the scientific community about the study of the new domain, named Digital Creativity, that is a widespread and unclear realm in rapid evolution and constant redefinition, where multiple disciplines already investigate the influences and relationship between creativity and digital technology from several and fragmented perspectives. The chapter provides a brief review of the main authors studying this domain, showing the two main perspectives identified to explore Digital Creativity from a design-oriented perspective.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_3

29

30

3.2

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

The Variegate Scenario of Creativity Definitions

Creativity has been studied by psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, educators, historian, economists, engineers, and scholars of all types, and nowadays there is still a continuous growth of creativity studies applied in many fields such as education, innovation and business, the arts and sciences, and society as a whole (Florida 2014; Runco 2007; Simonton 1997). The interest by many different disciplines has contributed to the development of a panoply of theories that conceptualize creativity from various different perspectives and approaches, highlighting its complex and multidimensional nature. Defining creativity has been considered one of the most difficult tasks of the social sciences. The creativity concept is constantly changing and evolving according to the sociocultural environment around us (Runco 2017), many definitions—over 50—have been proposed (Runco 2004), and many more will be. However, some authors have tried to formulate a shared definition to at least identify some pillars that give shape and direction to the phenomenon. According to Kaufman and Sternberg (2010), most definitions of creative ideas comprise three main components that represents the basics: novelty—therefore creative ideas must represent something new or innovative; goodness—therefore creative ideas are of high quality; and relevance—therefore creative ideas must also be appropriate to the task at hand. According to this perspective, a creative idea should be novel, good, and relevant. This vision provides a description of creativity that is totally oriented to the output of the creative act. In this direction, a largely accepted definition is the Standard Definition of Creativity that states that creativity requires originality and effectiveness (Runco and Jaeger 2012). Original things must be effective to be creative, meaning that they have to be useful, appropriate, or, according to economic research on creativity, generate value based on the current market (Rubenson 1991; Rubenson and Runco 1992, 1995; Sternberg and Lubart 1991, as cited by Runco and Jaeger 2012). Simonton (2012) promoted the integration of non obviousness or surprise, besides novelty and utility. Even if it’s widely recognized, the Standard Definition of Creativity has been criticized in particular by those researchers that address creativity studies from the sociocultural perspectives and stress the importance of the audience and the relationships that are inherent between the creative person, the creative process, and the audience itself (Amabile 1996; Csikszentmihalyi 1988; Glăveanu 2010). Another critique comes from Corazza (2016) who maintains that the definition “fails to give a proper place to creative inconclusiveness, as well as to the abilities, traits, and contextual elements that are instrumental in increasing the chances to see the light at the end of this crucial part of the process” (p. 261). He proposed that, at the core of the definition of creativity, there should be the search for potential originality and effectiveness because creativity is a dynamic

3.2 The Variegate Scenario of Creativity Definitions

31

rather than static phenomenon that requires cognitive and affective energy and a dynamic relationship with the environment. He formulated a dynamic definition of creativity that states: “Creativity requires potential originality and effectiveness” (Corazza 2016), shifting the focus more on the creative process and on active engagement rather, than the creative achievement itself. In creativity, as in many other areas of positive human activities, active engagement has a very important value in itself, even without achievement and/or recognition of success. Creativity is intended also as an ability to discover something new, to adapt the available knowledge purposefully, and to solve the problems originally, flexibly, and effectively (Runco and Jaeger 2012). This definition treats creativity as a skill, while also paying attention to the mechanisms that occur within the creative act. Poincare (1924) considered creativity as the ability to recognize the usefulness of new configurations of existing elements. He considered creativity as a skill that is based on the ability to “disconnect” and reconnect existing elements of knowledge to each other, by association, according to schemes never used before. The first reference to the multiphase structure of the creative process to solve mathematical problems belongs to him. Wallas (2014), inspired by his work, speak about creativity in terms of creative process and provide a configuration in four mental phases: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This classification was the starting point to define new models (Corazza and Agnoli 2015a, b; Dubberly 2004; Tassoul and Buijs 2007) to better describe process phases. When defining creativity and innovation, it is essential to take into consideration the social, cultural and economic context in which we live. In fact, with human evolution, there are new domains in which creativity is often expressed, such as politics, digital technology, moral and everyday creativity (Runco 2017) that also led to the definition of new methodologies for its investigation (Williams et al. 2016) and new perspective through which the phenomenon is defined. For example, with the technological advancement there has been a boom in neuroscientific research on creativity thanks to new equipment for assessing creative potential as well as an employment for enhancing creative thinking (Benedek et al. 2006). Therefore the study of creativity must evolve along with the dramatic technology-induced transformations of society. This means that actually there is no static definition of creativity, but it evolves over time since its judgments and manifestations fluctuate over time (Csikszentmihalyi 1990; Runco et al. 2016b; Runco et al. 2010, as cited by Runco 2017, p. 308), according to the domain in which it is applied and the perspective adopted for its study. The new technological domain has contributed to this variation, and Runco and Jaeger (2012) proposed that fluctuation should be expected of definitions. Therefore, it’s fundamental to study and understand how creativity changes because it is a fundamental skill that can guide the human being throughout its evolution.

32

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

It is quite evident that the phenomenon of creativity involves many nuances and interpretations, and it is necessary to adopt a clear perspective for its studies to circumscribe the phenomenon. Also, the conclusion achieved by studying creativity may depend strongly on how terms are defined; a conclusion that appears true by one definition of creativity may simply not apply when another is used. To make some clarification to how the definition and theories on creativity have evolved, the next session offers a brief historical review of the evolution of modern creativity research.

3.3

Evolving Creativity: From Creativity 1.0 to Creativity 4.0

The concept of creativity has its own history, taking an intellectual path that was for two centuries been independent of the institutionalization and conceptualization of research. At their beginnings and during most of their histories of development, research and creativity were not viewed as related to one another. In 1869, Francis Galton offered the world, through his “Hereditary Genius”, the first scientific study of the creative genius (Simonton 2003) where creativity was seen as based on the individuality, insight, outstanding ability, and fertility of the isolated genius (Mason 2003). He gave an elitist and essentialist account of creativity (Negus and Pickering 2004, p. 81). Modern creativity research began in the 1950s and 1960s. From that time until today, researchers have focused their studies on different aspects of creativity contributing to the creation of the rich baggage of knowledge that has cancelled the concept of creativity as an ability of an isolated genius. Nowadays, creativity research can be grouped into two major traditions of research: an individualistic approach and a sociocultural approach. Each of them has its own distinctive analytic focus, and each of them defines creativity slightly differently. These approaches are based on years of research that can be mainly clustered in three waves of psychological studies—discussed within this section—that have enabled the evolution of different visions of the concept of creativity. They range from a first vision defined as creativity 1.0 (the first wave) where creativity research was focused on studying the personalities of exceptional creators; to a creativity 2.0 (the second wave) where researchers shifted their attention to the mental processes that occur while people are engaged in creative behaviour; to a sociocultural, interdisciplinary approach, creativity 3.0 (the third wave) focused on the social dimension of creativity. Let’s explore in detail these waves. Around the 1950s, a first wave of psychologists started to scientifically investigate the traits and the types of the creative personality. These psychologists adopted an individualistic approach to the study of creativity that defined creativity as “a new mental combination that is expressed in the world” (Sawyer 2012, p. 7).

3.3 Evolving Creativity: From Creativity 1.0 to Creativity 4.0

33

According to the individualistic approach, the first wave of psychologists asserted that “creativity resides in the middle ground between ability and personality; it’s highly correlated with intelligence and yet it’s also associated with various personality traits” (Sawyer 2012, p. 63–64). For psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s, creativity was synonymous with scientific creativity. They worked hard to develop tests to assess and identify children who were gifted and talented so that schools could nurture their talents and target them for high-creativity careers in science and technology (e.g. Parnes and Harding 1962, as cited in Sawyer 2012, p. 37). One of the main voices in psychology of this first wave was that of Guilford, remembered for his historical APA presidential address in 1950. While calling the attention of psychologists to the topic of creativity, he also gave them a clear agenda: “the psychologist’s problem is that of creative personality” (Guilford 1950, p. 444) and “creative acts can therefore be expected, no matter how feeble or how infrequent, of almost all individuals” (Guilford 1950, p. 446). And Guilford’s message was heard: for the following decades, psychologists looked intensively for the personal attributes of individuals (personality, intelligence, etc.) and their links to creativity (Amabile 1996). On the other hand, studies of the creative personality proved to be an even more fertile tradition. Among the most common traits encountered were: tolerance for ambiguity and orientation towards the future (Stein 1953); independence of judgment; preference for complexity; strong desire to create; deep motivation; strong intuitive nature and patience (Barron 1999); originality; and a good imagination (Tardif and Sternberg 1988). In addition, perseverance, intellectual curiosity, openness to experience (Carson et al. 2005; King et al. 1996; McCrae 1987; Silvia et al. 2008, as cited by Sawyer 2012, p. 66), a risk-taking attitude, and self-efficacy (Bandura 1986) have been recognized as fundamental attitudes for the performance of creative activity and reaching original and novel results. Around 1970, a second wave of psychologists started to study creativity in a different and new way (Feldman et al. 1994). Behaviourism and personality psychology were replaced by cognitive psychology that started to analyse the cognitive structures and the mental mechanisms, shared by all the individuals, occurring when engaging in a creative activity. They contributed to spread a more democratic view of creativity: All persons of normal intelligence possess some ability to think creatively and to engage themselves in imaginative and innovative efforts (Roth 1973). “Psychologists have studied the creative process for decades, and they’ve observed that creativity tends to occur in a sequence of stages” (Sawyer 2012, p. 88). The first configuration of the creative process was proposed by Wallas (2014), which—as previously mentioned—divided the process into four phases. Sawyer (2012) proposed an integrated framework that captures the key stages of all the various models that psychologists have proposed (p. 89). Indeed, process theories specify different stages of processing (e.g. Mace and Ward 2002; Simonton 1984; Wallas 1926; Ward et al. 1999, as cited by Kozbelt

34

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

et al. 2010, p. 31) or particular mechanisms as a component of creative thought (e.g. Mumford et al. 1997; Mumford et al. 1991, as cited by Kozbelt et al. 2010, p. 31) such as conceptual combination, analogic thinking, associative thinking, structured imagination, and creative visualization (Ward et al. 1999). What all these diverse approaches have in common is their attempt to relate creativity to something from within the psychology of the person. The two waves refer to an individualistic approach and are not opposed but complementary. They are both needed to explain this complex phenomenon. Both personality traits and attitudes and cognitive processes are still studied and explored today, continuously adding shades and nuances. Around the 1980s, a third wave of researchers introduced a paradigm shift by adopting a new sociocultural approach to the study of creativity. They adopted a more holistic approach and studied creative people working together in cultural and social systems. Everyone is a member of many social groups, each one constituted by a network; everyone is a member of a culture and creates as a representative of a certain historical period (Glăveanu 2015). According to the sociocultural approach, the totality of this aspect contributes to influence and determine the creative potential of an individual (Amabile 1983). The individual and social views are not mutually exclusive: Glăveanu (2015) maintained the social paradigm include the individualistic theory as part of creative complexity. An interdisciplinary approach is useful for the explanation of creativity. Today, the emergence and development of digital applications, such as YouTube, Instagram, and Flickr, and the rapid penetration, in almost all aspects of our everyday life, of ubiquitous communication devices, such as smartphones and laptop, and the burgeoning of disruptive technology are providing new opportunities for creative expression, also a means of self-expression (Lassig 2012). Such tools enable people to express themselves in new ways, to make original and valued contributions, and to broaden opportunities for realizing one’s imagination (Loveless 2003). Those in the youngest generation have grown up with technology at their fingertips, and this probably has impacted the stimulus they need for expressing and releasing their creative potential. Online participation has the potential to connect people and ideas, sharing information and facilitating collaboration also in the digital world. These features not only impact creativity as a phenomenon but essentially redefine it “as the processes of creatively collaborating with others find themselves mediated by technological means” (Literat and Glăveanu 2016). Digital technology and its influence are reshaping individuals and society from the human brain outwards and have established new norms for carrying out communication, work, and entertainment. Therefore, conventional definitions of creativity need to be redefined and reinterpreted from the perspective of digital technology. The need to understand the digital impact on creativity has gained increased attention (Jackson et al. 2012; Schmitt et al. 2012; Zaman et al. 2010, as cited by Lee and Chen 2015, p. 12) giving birth to a fourth wave of study called creativity 4.0 where multidisciplinary researchers are investigating how creativity is evolving

3.3 Evolving Creativity: From Creativity 1.0 to Creativity 4.0

35

Fig. 3.1 Evolution of creativity studies: from creativity 1.0 to creativity 4.0

in the digital era and how it is influenced by the human, cultural, and technological evolution of this era. The exploration of this wave sheds some light on a new domain called Digital Creativity. The next section provides an overview on the state of the art of this contemporary domain of study (Fig. 3.1).

3.4

The Digital Creativity Domain

“As digital innovation has permeated our daily lives, creativity has started to take a new shape: Digital Creativity” (Lee and Chen 2015). Lee (2015) provided one of the first definitions of Digital Creativity: ‘‘all forms of creativity driven by digital technologies’’. In other words, Digital Creativity occurs when any kind of digital device or digital technology is used for various creative activities. This is a very wide definition considering that the concept of creativity spans a multitude of domains—from art to science to literature to business and beyond— and that the creative act is often mediated by digital tools, without even an awareness of using them. The scientific literature on Digital Creativity is comprised of a range of multidisciplinary contributions that makes clear the fragmented and distributed nature of knowledge and makes it difficult to read and understand the phenomenon as a whole. Due to the very recent emergence of this concept, the scope, the perspective, and the main research themes of digital creativity studies are still not sufficiently clear.

36

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

The literature review published by Lee and Chen “Digital Creativity: Research Themes and Framework” (2015) tries to get some clarity out of it to facilitate the comprehension and study of digital creativity. By analysing 3591 pieces of relevant literature treating the topic of creativity and digital technology, they identified 20 major research themes—clustered in four categories—of digital creativity treated by multiple disciplines, such as computer science, social science, economics and business, art and humanities, and multidisciplinary studies (Fig. 3.2). Another fundamental reflection coming from this analysis is that Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Theme is the core of Digital Creativity research. By approaching the HCI field, it emerges that one of the most recognized bodies of research has been done by Shneiderman (2000, 2002, 2007), Shneiderman et al. (2005). He has consistently undertaken studies on “Creativity Support Tools” (CST) that are intended as user interfaces or software supporting creativity across domains, empowering users to be more productive and more innovative. The goal of CST is to make more people more creative more often, enabling them to face a wider variety of challenges creatively and successfully in many domains. In 2005 he organized the workshop, “Creativity Support Tools” sponsored by the National Science Foundation, with the main aim of accelerating research on this topic and defining guidelines for the design and development of these tools.

Fig. 3.2 Digital Creativity Framework defined by Lee and Chen (2015). The framework organizes the 20 identified themes on Digital Creativity in four broad categories

3.4 The Digital Creativity Domain

37

According with the results obtained (Shneiderman et al. 2005), a CST should enable more effective searching of intellectual resources, improve team collaboration, and speed up creative discovery processes. They should also provide support in hypothesis formation, speedier evaluation of alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better dissemination of results. This Digital Creativity perspective from HCI is very much focused on the application of any kind of digital technology to develop a tool that could enhance and support some aspect of the creative process that allow individuals or teams to reach high levels of performance. Another interesting article that follows this perspective is by Burkhardt and Lubart “Creativity in the Age of Emerging Technology: Some Issues and Perspectives in 2010” (2010). This was overview of progress in the HCI field in developing tools and digital spaces to support the individual and collaborative creative process, citing the major studies that has been done in the field. A totally different perspective on the investigation and interpretation of Digital Creativity has been adopted by Zagalo and Branco in the book “Creativity in the Digital Age” (2015) and by Gauntlett in “Making is Connecting” (2011). They deal with the topic from a sociological point of view by observing the social and the behavioural changes occurring due to the increased diffusion of digital tools. They share a common idea of creative technology intended as a means to help people find their own unique creative skills and to introduce them to the world, opening new dimensions for the facilitation of creativity by the broader population and, at the same time, making self-discovery possible. New democratic digital technologies “have opened up complete new hands-on possibilities and, together with the social networks, have been crucial in creating community ties, to increase collaboration and participation, opening space for more elaborative creative technologies allowing in depth collaborative creation” (Zagalo and Branco 2015, p. 12). These digital technologies make possible new avenues of widespread creativity by the general population, intrinsically motivated, but sharing a participatory culture made of content generated by all. They enable the creation of an open and free culture that is socially recognized and is built on the values of being part of a community. A similar perspective has been pursued within psychological studies, however, with very few recent contributions. Surprisingly, the discipline of psychology, which, as we learned at the beginning of this chapter, has been responsible for the production of most of the scientific foundation of creativity, has practically almost not yet addressed the theme of Digital Creativity. Two interesting contributions comes from Glaveanu and Literat: “Same but Different? Distributed Creativity in the Internet Age” (2016) and “Distributed Creativity on the Internet: A Theoretical Foundation for Online Creative Participation” (2018). They analysed the evolution and spread of collaborative creative processes in the online environment, proposing a fresh perspective with which to study and analyse creativity in the digital age. They started from the observation of newly emerging social phenomena and human behaviours, such as

38

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

the online presence and participation, and proposed the framework of distributed creativity to highlight some changes in the process of creation. Also, Corazza and Agnoli “On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans” (2015a, b) explore the opportunities that ICT technologies have opened for the general domain of creative processes. Many other articles have analysed these opportunities in a specific domain, such as the work environment (Oldham and Da Silva 2016; Cabanero-Johnson and Berge 2009) or the educational context (Hoffmann et al. 2016). Thanks to this brief overview of major recognized contributions, it is possible to assume that Digital Creativity is an evolving, growing discipline with great potential. It is a burgeoning phenomenon in rapid evolution and constant redefinition, where a dominant scientific thought has not yet been stratified and codified in theories and practices with references for those who approach this theme of research. From this overview, two main perspectives clearly emerge for exploring this domain that can be considered as the two main directions to observe the influences that the digital age is bringing on human creativity. These are further discussed in the next section.

3.5

Perspectives to Explore Digital Creativity

Creativity has become, in our times, a sort of individual responsibility—everyone is required to cultivate his or her own creativity. In the digital age, creativity has been recognized as one of the most important human skills (The Partnership of 21st Century Skills 2008; World Economic Forum 2016) that can support people in facing the complex and continuous social, technological, and economic changes we are experiencing, offering a competitive advantage over others in a world dominated by the need to achieve and accumulate. Creativity has become a democratic necessity (Corazza 2017), encouraging people to generate novel and useful ideas (Amabile 1988; Sternberg and Lubart 1999; Runco et al. 2012), helping them in manage the adoption of new digital technologies, taking advantage of their opportunities, and putting them at the service of the community in any field (Lee and Chen 2015). It is therefore necessary to put human creativity at the centre of the digital transition because it is an increasingly essential skill for our survival in this era, especially in the necessary collaboration between humans and machines (Corazza 2017). Innovation today doesn’t solely rely on technology itself, but primarily on how it interacts with humanity, solving their problems, meeting their needs or challenges. Empowering such an ability enables humans to acquire a maturity towards the evolution of digital technologies. Therefore, for design research, exploring and understanding Digital Creativity is a gateway to identify the evolved human factors for creative empowerment and how digital technologies can support and enhance them.

3.5 Perspectives to Explore Digital Creativity

39

As shown in the previous section, a preliminary investigation of the domain sheds light on two different perspectives that are important to distinguish to deeply understand and achieve Digital Creativity. The first perspective analyses the concept of creativity in the digital age that encompass the study of how creativity is understood in a time where more and more practices and work settings are becoming digitalised. This perspective is mainly adopted within the psychological and sociological fields that address the theme from a human point of view by observing the behavioural, social, and cultural changes related to the adoption of a diffused creative behaviour. They observe and theorize about the new creative languages born with the introduction, diffusion, and adoption of digital technologies, how this will change culture and the new real possibilities and threats that all these changes represent for human creativity, and all the impact it can have on human life. According to this perspective, the new creative technologies are “forming the ground for the next great cultural movement giving voice to user’s wishes to express inner feelings, ideas, and visions; transforming; and giving shape to whatever imagination can generate” (Zagalo and Branco 2015, p. 2). According to this perspective, the expression of creativity doesn’t always imply the use of a digital tool. The second perspective can be defined as digitally supported creativity that encompasses the study of how creativity can be supported and enhanced by digital technologies but also how creativity can be transformed and become yet more digital. Technologies for Digital Creativity support many different kinds of artwork in digital representation (text, layout, image, sound, 3D object, moving image, etc.), as well as new forms of art such as generative art. The technologies also enable us to capture, store, manipulate, and output these representations to produce media forms we can experience. This perspective is mainly adopted within the computer science field and the HCI domain that addresses the theme from a technological perspective testing and studies the application and potentialities of specific digital technologies for creative achievement. Within this paradigm, the expression of creativity always implies the use of a digital tool. These two perspectives are not so separate in reality and are not mutually exclusive. They represent different starting points with which Digital Creativity can be studied and investigated, as well as two discrete containers to explore the production of knowledge in this field. Acknowledging these different viewpoints enhances understanding that the study of Digital Creativity also includes the study of the human being and the social and cultural changes within digital age that could affect creativity. A typical example is social networking, considered as a new mindset where individuals connect to others online and can access a plentiful store of relevant information, enabling them to more effectively focus on targeted issues and themes. Today the process of creating involves a continuous movement across analog and digital and across the real and virtual.

40

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

The identification of the two perspective represents a way to achieve the first level of organization in the domain. To move further in the exploration and understand the evolution of creativity and the role of digital tools, it is fundamental to define a creativity frame, by interconnecting existing approaches (Rhodes 1961; Runco 2004; Kaufmann and Sternberg 2010), and confront it with the cognitive, behavioural, technological human changes brought by the digital transition as observed in Chap. 2. This creativity frame is fundamental for a structured exploration of Digital Creativity with a design-oriented vision. Its definition is explained in detail in Chap. 4.

References Amabile, T.M.: The social psychology of creativity: a componential conceptualization. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45(2), 357 (1983) Amabile, T.M.: A model of creativity and innovation in organizations. Res. Org. Behav., 123–167 (1988) Amabile, T.M.: Creativity and innovation in organizations. In: Harvard Business School Background Note, pp. 239–396 (1996) Bandura, A.: Social foundations of thought and action: a social-cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (1986) Barron, F.: All creation is a collaboration. In: Montuori, A., Purser, R. (eds.) Social Creativity, 1, pp. 49–59. Hampton Press, Cresskill (1999) Benedek, M., Fink, A., Neubauer, A.C.: Enhancement of ideational fluency by means of computer-based training. Creat. Res. J. 18, 317–328 (2006) Burkhardt, J.M., Lubart, T.: Creativity in the age of emerging technology: some issues and perspectives in 2010. Creat. Inno. Manag. 19(2), 160–166 (2010) Cabanero‐Johnson, P.S., Berge, Z.: Digital natives: back to the future of microworlds in a corporate learning organization. Learn. Org. 16(4), 290–297 (2009) Carson, S.H., Peterson, J.B., Higgins, D.M.: Reliability, validity, and factor structure of the creative achievement questionnaire. Creat. Res. J. 17(1), 37–50 (2005) Corazza, G.E.: Potential originality and effectiveness: the dynamic definition of creativity. Creat. Res. J. 28(3), 258–267 (2016) Corazza, G.E.: Organic creativity for well-being in the post-information society. Europe’s J. Psychol. 13(4), 599–605 (2017) Corazza, G.E., Agnoli, S.: On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans. In: MCCSIS Conference 2015 Proceedings, Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (2015a) Corazza, G.E., Agnoli, S.: Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Science of Creative Thinking. Springer, Singapore (2015b) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Society, culture, and person: a systems view of creativity. In: Sternberg, R. J. (ed.) The Nature of Creativity, pp. 325–339. Cambridge University Press, New York (1988) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row, New York (1990) Dubberly, H.: How Do You Design. A Compendium of Models. Dubberly Design Office (2004) Feldman, D.H., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Gardner, H.: Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity. Praeger, Westport, CT (1994) Florida, R.: The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited. Basic Books, New York (2014) Gauntlett, D.: Making is Connecting, The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Polity Press, Cambridge (2011) Glăveanu, V.P.: Paradigms in the study of creativity: introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New Ideas Psychol. 28(1), 79–93 (2010) Glăveanu, V.P.: Creativity as a sociocultural act. J. Creat. Behav. 49(3), 165–180 (2015)

References

41

Guilford, J.P.: Creativity. Am. Psychol. 5(9), 444–454 (1950) Hoffmann, J., Ivcevic, Z., Brackett, M.: Creativity in the age of technology: measuring the digital creativity of millennials. Creat. Res. J. 28(2), 149–153 (2016) Jackson, L.A., Witt, E.A., Games, A.I., Fitzgerald, H.E., von Eye, A., Zhao, Y.: Information technology use and creativity: findings from the children and technology project. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28(2), 370–376 (2012) Kaufman, J., Sternberg, R.: The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2010) King, L.A., Walker, L.M., Broyles, S.J.: Creativity and the five-factor model. J. Res. Pers. 30(2), 189–203 (1996) Kozbelt, A., Beghetto, R.A., Runco, M.A.: Theories of creativity. In: Kaufman, J.C., Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2010) Lassig, C.J.: Perceiving and pursuing novelty: a grounded theory of adolescent creativity. Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology (2012) Lee, K.C.: Digital creativity: New frontier for research and practice. Comput. Hum. Behav. 42, 1– 4 (2015) Lee, M.R., Chen, T.T.: Digital creativity: research themes and framework. Comput. Hum. Behav. 42, 12–19 (2015) Literat, I., Glăveanu, V.P.: Same but different? Distributed creativity in the internet age. Creat. Theor. Res. Appl. 3(2), 330–342 (2016) Literat, I., Glaveanu, V.P.: Distributed creativity on the internet: a theoretical foundation for online creative participation. Int. J. Commun. (0), 893–908 (2018) Loveless, A.: Creating spaces in the primary curriculum: ICT in creative subjects. Curriculum J. 14 (1), 5–21 (2003) Mace, M.A., Ward, T.: Modeling the creative process: A grounded theory analysis of creativity in the domain of art making. Creat. Res. J. 14(2), 179–192 (2002) Mason, J.H.: The Value of Creativity: An Essay on Intellectual History, from Genesis to Nietzsche. Ashgate, Hampshire (2003) McCrae, R.R.: Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. J. Pers. Soc. Psych. 52 (6), 1258 (1987) Mumford, M.D., Baughman, W.A., Maher, M.A., Costanza, D.P., Supinski, E.P.: Process-based measures of creative problem-solving skills: IV Category combination. Creat. Res. J. 10(1), 59–71 (1997) Mumford, M.D., Mobley, M.I., Reiter‐Palmon, R., Uhlman, C.E., Doares, L.M.: Process analytic models of creative capacities. Creat. Res. J. 4(2), 91–122 (1991) Negus, K., Pickering, M.: Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. Sage Publications, London (2004) Oldham, G.R., Da Silva, N.: The impact of digital technology on the generation and implementation of creative ideas in the workplace. Comput. Hum. Behav. 42, 4–11 (2016) Parnes, S.J., Harding, H.F.: Preface In Parnes, S.J., Harding, H.F (Eds), A source book for creative thinking, v–viii, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York (1962) Poincare, H.: The Foundation of Science. Science Press, New York (1924) Rhodes, M.: An analysis of creativity. Phi Delta Kappan 42(7), 305–310 (1961) Roth, B.: Design process and creativity. Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/ bernie-roth-treatise-on-design-thinking (1973). Last accessed 15 Dec 2019 Rubenson, D.L.: On creativity, economics, and baseball. Creat. Res. J. 4, 205–209 (1991) Rubenson, D.L., Runco, M.A.: The psychoeconomic approach to creativity. New Ideas in Psychology 10, 131–147 (1992) Rubenson, D.L., Runco, M.A.: The psychoeconomic view of creative work in groups and organizations. Creat. Innov. Manage. 4, 232–241 (1995) Runco, M.A.: Creativity. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 55, 657–687 (2004) Runco, M.A.: Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice. Elsevier Academic Press, San Diego, CA (2007)

42

3 Digital Creativity Dimension: A New Domain for Creativity

Runco, M.A.: Comments on where the creativity research has been and where is it going. J. Creat. Behav. 51, 308–313 (2017) Runco, M.A., Jaeger, G.J.: The standard definition of creativity. Creat. Res. J. 24(1), 92–96 (2012) Runco, M.A., Kaufman, J.C., Halladay, L.R., Cole, J.C.: Change in reputation as index of genius and eminence. Historical Methods 43, 91–96 (2010) Runco, M.A., Acar, S., Kaufman, J.C., Halliday, L.R.: Changes in reputation and associations with fame and biographical data. J. Genius. Emin. 1, 52–60 (2016b) Sawyer, R.K.: Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. University Press, Oxford (2012) Schmitt, L., Buisine, S., Chaboissier, J., Aoussat, A., Vernier, F.: Dynamic tabletop interfaces for increasing creativity. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28(5), 1892–1901 (2012) Shneiderman, B.: Creating creativity: user interfaces for supporting innovation. ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact. 7(1), 114–138 (2000) Shneiderman, B.: Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. MIT Press, Cambridge, UK (2002) Shneiderman, B.: Creativity support tools: Accelerating discovery and innovation. Commun. ACM 50(12), 20–32 (2007) Shneiderman, B., Fischer, G., Czerwinski, M., Myers, B.: Creativity support tools. In: National Science Foundation Workshop Report, pp. 1–83 (2005) Silvia, P.J., Winterstein, B.P., Willse, J.T., Barona, C.M., Cram, J.T., Hess, K.I., et al.: Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 2(2), 68 (2008) Simonton, D.K.: Genius, creativity, and leadership. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1984) Simonton, D.K.: Creative productivity: a predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks. Psychol. Rev. 104(1), 66 (1997) Simonton, D.K.: Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations: Strategies and results. In: Paulus, P., Nijstad, B. (eds.) Group Creativity: Innovation Through Collaboration, pp. 304–325. Oxford University Press, New York (2003) Simonton, D.K.: Taking the U.S. patent office criteria seriously: a quantitative three-criterion creativity definition and its implications. Creat. Res. J., 97–106 (2012) Stein, M.: Creativity and culture. J. Psychol. 36, 311–322 (1953) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: An investment theory of creativity and its development. Hum. Dev. 34(1), 1–31 (1991) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms. In: Sternberg, R. J. (ed.) Handbook of Creativity, pp. 3–15. Cambridge, New York (1999) Tardif, T.Z., Sternberg, R.J.: What do we know about creativity? In: Sternberg, R.J. (ed.) The Nature of Creativity, pp. 429–440. Cambridge University Press, New York (1988) Tassoul, M., Buijs, J.: Clustering: an essential step from diverging to converging. Creat. Inno. Manage. 16(1), 16–26 (2007) The Partnership of 21st Century Skills.: 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness. A Resource and Policy Guide (2008) Wallas G.: The Art of Thought, 1st Ed. 1926. Solis Press (2014) Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M., Finke, R.A.: Creative cognition. In: Sternberg, R.J. (ed.) Handbook of Creativity, pp. 189–212. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1999) Williams, R., Runco, M.A., Berlow, E.: Mapping the themes, impact, and cohesion of creativity research over the last 25 years. Creat. Res. J. 28, 385–394 (2016) World Economic Forum.: The future of jobs: employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution (Report), Switzerland. Retrieved from http://www.weforum.org/ reports/the-future-of-jobs (2016). Last accessed 20 Dec 2019 Zagalo, N., Branco, P.: Creativity in the Digital Age. Springer-Verlag, London (2015) Zaman, M., Anandarajan, M., Dai, Q.: Experiencing flow with instant messaging and its facilitating role on creative behaviors. Comput. Hum. Behav. 26(5), 1009–1018 (2010)

Part II

Design Exploring Digital Creativity

Chapter 4

Design and Digital Creativity

4.1

Introduction

In a transitional era, design must analyse current transformations and play the role of a guide by enabling and empowering people’s creative and design skills and mindsets, educating them to face the complex digital transformations of our century. People should understand how to cooperate with digital technologies, apply these creative abilities to adopt digital opportunities to generate innovation to meet future global challenges, and to manage the threats spawned by the digital evolution. Exploring Digital Creativity, understanding the new asset of creativity in the digital age, the new skills and knowledge to develop, and how to digitally empower them, becomes a milestone for design research and requires a systemic approach. In the first part of the book, we have seen how broad and multifaceted the Digital Creativity domain is, and that is fundamental to outlining a clear perspective for exploring it. This chapter aims to show the design perspective adopted to deeply investigate Digital Creativity, providing a broader understanding of creativity in design. Starting from the analysis of the framework theories for the study of creativity, a human-centred approach has been adopted taking into consideration the human components (i.e. human building blocks that control and determine the creative processes) involved in a creative activity and highlighting for each component the human factors (i.e. elements, circumstances, or conditions that specify the component and make possible their being put into action) that influence the creative process. The analysis ranged from the studies on the cognitive processes that occur in our mind while creating, to the identification of the personality and social factors that influence the level of individual and group creativity. Five main components have been identified: creativity relevant processes, knowledge and skills, motivation and attitudes, emotion, and social environment. Each one of this block contains a set of factors of creativity that strongly foster creative production. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_4

45

46

4 Design and Digital Creativity

The factors of creativity and the creative process therefore become the lenses used for the exploration of digital creativity to understand how they evolve and how they are influenced by digital technologies.

4.2

Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity

Within creativity research, there are many attempts to organize and classify all the main theories that have been produced, so that researchers can use this classification as a guide for selecting a perspective for creativity inquiry and for clustering new theories. Kozbelt et al. (2010) have tried to classify these theories based on their commonalities in ten major categories to provide an overview of the theoretical landscape of creativity studies. Their classification is related to theories with which the topic of creativity has been and could be studied. Other interesting frameworks classified studies according to the multiple different facets that together forms the complex phenomenon of creativity. An example is the 4 Ps of Creativity Framework proposed by Rhodes in (1961): Person, referring to the attributes of those who create; Process, referring to the mental mechanisms that occur when a person is engaged in creative thinking or creative activity; Press, referring to the influence of the external physical and social environment on the creator; and Product, referring to the output of creative work. Some authors have suggested the 4 P’s, although serving as the “backbone” of much thinking on creativity, do not fully capture the field (Runco 2007). Recently the framework has been extended to 6 P’s adding Persuasion (Simonton 1990) and Potential (Runco 2003). Following the same path, Lubart (2017) proposed a new extended framework conceptualising the work on creativity in terms of 7 Cs, adding new facets that haven’t been considered in the 4 P’s framework. These are: Creators, Creating, Collaborations, Contexts, Creations, Consumption, and Curricula. These aspects together comprise the field of creativity. The 7 Cs of creativity aim at clustering the seven main themes in the field. Even if they are described as separate facets, many studies cover more than one of the Cs. Combining two or more themes may suggest new topics that deserve attention for further investigation. These frameworks enable understanding of the complexity and the multitude of elements that come into play when studying creativity and to frame a perspective of study by choosing which aspects to investigate. The design purpose in the exploration of Digital Creativity is to understand the fundamental human creative abilities to be developed in this century and how to digitally stimulate them to enable people to deal with the complexity brought by technological development.

4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity

47

There is therefore a need to adopt a human-centred and democratic approach to creativity that allows highlighting the key elements to stimulate and train to increase the creative abilities of each individual. A design researcher’s primary interest is to train and empower the individual’s creative process and the ingredients that improve individual performance within the creative process to obtain impressive results. Considering the 7 Cs framework, three different facets of the phenomenon have been integrated and interconnected for the exploration of the domain of Digital Creativity from a design perspective (Fig. 4.1). These are: • Creator refers to the cognitive, personality, motivational, and emotional characteristics of the actors who engage in creative production. The actors refer to the digitally enhanced generation, meaning the actual and future generation that is growing up in an ever-increasingly digital world. • Creating refers to steps of the creative process as a form of activity or action (Dewey 1934) that is the underlying substrate of the design process. • Context refers to the environmental and contextual aspects that could influence the creators and the creative process. Moreover, context refers to the actual scenario of digital transition defined as the increasing evolution of digital technologies and their adoption by society that influences several aspects of human life. The intersection of these three aspects, drawing on their related theories and sources, highlights the human-centred perspective adopted for the exploration of Digital Creativity. Indeed, the aim is to explore how the context of the digital transition reshapes and influences positively and negatively the creator and the creative process that represents a first attempt of this kind and contributes to the originality of the present investigation.

Fig. 4.1 The 7 Cs of creativity framework (left) and the perspective adopted for the exploration of digital creativity (right)

48

4 Design and Digital Creativity

An extended and elaborated definition of creativity offered by Plucker et al. (2004) explains well this perspective: “Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context” (p. 90). This definition entails that creativity depends on many factors related both to the person and to the surrounding environment. Those factors have been separately investigated by researchers throughout the successive waves of studies described in Chap. 3. However, few attempts within the literature have attempted to structure general models that provide an overview of all the creator’s factors that could affect the creative process. The next section introduces these models explaining their similarities and differences. From their comparison and integration comes the definition of the frame of reference that could support the exploration and identification of the influences of the digital transition on human creative potential.

4.2.1

Componential Theories of Creativity

People are not born creative or uncreative (Sternberg and Lubart 1991; Amabile 1988). According to Sternberg and Lubart (1991), creative people develop a set of attitudes toward life that are teachable through instruction that encourages people to think for themselves. Creative individuals tend to challenge the crowd, going off in their own directions, seeking to propose ideas that are both novel and useful in some way. They have to acquire the ability of “buying low and selling high” (Sternberg and Lubart 1992), meaning that they generate ideas that at the time are viewed as novel and perhaps slightly ridiculous, but once they have gained some acceptance, the creative individual reaps the profits of the good idea and moves on to the next unpopular idea. Within the wide variety of studies, many researchers asked themselves: What is the mix of ingredients that makes a person more creative? What are the human elements that, when integrated and trained, allow creativity to emerge? In the psychological literature, there is a category of theories that focuses on the ingredients, in terms of the attributes, abilities, and circumstances that are necessary for creativity to emerge. These theories are called componential approaches and are attempts to specify the components and factors of creativity (e.g. the set of abilities, skills, traits, dispositions, and processes) that are involved in creative behaviour. Multiple models have been proposed that vary in the nature of the components for creativity, as well as the way that the components work together and interact with each other. This section analyses four componential model and compares them to identify the characteristics of the creators that engage in creative production.

4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity

49

The componential model of creativity The first and leading theory is the Componential Model of Creativity (Amabile 1983, 1996; Amabile and Pratt 2016). Amabile identified the major components necessary for fostering individual or small-group creativity in any particular domain, considering also how each component might enter into the creative process (Fig. 4.2). The model stems from two main assumptions. The first one is that it is possible for anyone who possesses normal cognitive abilities to be creative to some degree in some domain. The second is that creativity can be trained, and there can be varying degrees of creativity within an individual’s work. According to her model, creativity is influenced by three main individual components: Task motivation, domain-relevant skills, and creativity-relevant processes. According to Amabile, creativity requires the presence and the intersection of all the components. Task motivation involves the individual reasons driving people to participate in an activity or task and the person’s attitude toward the activity to be accomplished. Intrinsic motivation, considered important for creativity, arises from the inherent qualities of a task, such as the challenge that the task offers. Extrinsic motivation, arising from sources exterior to the task (such as a reward for task completion), tends to have a negative influence on creativity. However, extrinsic motivators may

Fig. 4.2 Visualization of the componential model of creativity by Teresa Amabile. Adapted from Amabile (1983)

50

4 Design and Digital Creativity

have a positive effect on creativity in certain circumstances (e.g. when a high level of intrinsic motivation is present). In the revised model (Amabile and Pratt 2016), additional factors were added. Affect (and specifically positive affect) plays a role as a creativity-related process and can enhance motivation: Finding meaning in one’s task can increase both motivation and affect. Domain-relevant skills, also called expertise, (Amabile and Pratt 2016) are the basic raw materials and the “foundation for all creative work”. It includes factors such as memory for factual knowledge, technical skills for doing a specific activity, and special talents in the domain. For example, domain-relevant skills for creativity in science may be factual knowledge about a problematic phenomenon, technical skills for laboratory procedures, and a special talent for mental imagery. Creativity-relevant processes comprise a broader component that includes both personal attitudes factors, such as tolerance for ambiguity and the willingness to take risks, and cognitive factors. Creativity-relevant processes include a cognitive style that facilitates coping with complexity and disrupting one’s mindset during problem solving, the use of heuristics for generating novel ideas (e.g. trying a counterintuitive idea when stuck on a problem), and a work style characterised in part by persistence and sustained attention to a task. These three components are considered necessary and sufficient for creative work. An individual’s level in each of the three components determines that person’s creative performance on a task. If one component is absent (e.g., no domain skills), then creativity will not be possible. Those three components could be extremely influenced by a fourth component, outside the person, namely, the surrounding social environment that includes both social and material factors such as access to resources, environment set up, instrumental and social support, sharing ideas with peers, etc. External elements within the environment such as money, grades, or praise could drive and influence a component such as extrinsic motivation. The Multivariate Approach The Multivariate Approach (Fig. 4.3) (Sternberg and Lubart 1995; Lubart et al. 2003; Lubart and Guignard 2004; Botella et al. 2013) is a relevant model because it considers the dynamic interrelationships among a multiplicity of factors. This approach takes into account cognitive, personality, emotional and environmental factors (Sternberg and Lubart 1991, 1996) that influence the individual creative potential. The multivariate approach identifies three personal components important for creativity: the cognitive, emotional and conative (Lubart 1999). The cognitive component corresponds to the intellectual abilities involved in creativity. Lubart et al. (2003) proposed a summary of cognitive capacities including synthetic capacities of identification, definition and redefinition of the problem. Also, selective encoding permits the selection of relevant information for solving the problem. The selective comparison ability helps one to observe similarities between various domains. In addition, the creative person makes associations between the ideas collected (selective combination).

4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity

51

Fig. 4.3 Representation of the multivariate approach. Adapted from Lubart et al. (2003)

The conative component concerns personality traits and motivation. Creative individuals are usually described as open to new experiences. Openness is reflected in a dynamic fantasy life, aesthetic sensibility, emotional awareness, need for originality, intellectual curiosity, and a strong personal value system (Helson 1999). Creative people are also tolerant of ambiguity (Barron and Harrington 1981; Levy and Langer 1999). This component is associated with the emotional component, which includes emotional traits and states, and clustered in the broader conative-affective component. Finally, the multivariate approach emphasizes the environment that offers physical and/or social stimulations and can help the generation and maturation of ideas, thus reinforcing motivation (Lubart 1999). The environment includes the appreciation of creativity through social judgement. For Sternberg and Lubart (1995), creativity involves more than a sum of all these components: Certain constituents can partially compensate for each other. For example, a strong degree of motivation can mitigate a lack of knowledge. These components interact among themselves; the combination of high intelligence and strong motivation may enhance creative performance in a multiplicative manner. Thus, the multivariate approach focuses attention on the various constituents involved in creative activity and aims to examine the interactions between them.

52

4 Design and Digital Creativity

The Investment Theory of Creativity The third significant theory is The Investment Theory of Creativity (Sternberg and Lubart 1995), which uses an analogy of a creative person comparable to a financial investor. To be creative, one may buy low and sell high in the world of ideas. Therefore, successful creators can recognise undervalued ideas, convince others of their worth, and then move on to the next project. This theory, which partly builds on Amabile’s work, proposes a framework with six components that can contribute to creative expression. The first, intelligence, comprises cognitive abilities and intellectual processes. In particular, three intellectual abilities important for creativity are: (i) the synthetic ability to define and represent problems in new ways; (ii) the analytic ability to recognise which ideas are worth pursuing; and (iii) the practical ability to ‘‘sell’’ one’s work to others—to persuade them of the value of the new work. Knowledge is the second component that provides a large part of the raw material on which intellectual processes operate. With regard to knowledge, some knowledge is necessary to contribute to a field, but too much knowledge can result in an entrenched perspective (seeing a problem in terms of antiquated schemas). Styles of thinking refer to thinking in novel ways of one’s own and having a preference for working with the ‘‘big picture’’, rather than engaging with details that are considered important for creativity. Personality attributes include perseverance, willingness to take risks, willingness to tolerate ambiguity, openness, to new experiences, and individuality. Motivation may be either intrinsic or extrinsic as long it motivates and energizes a person to work, thus enabling the person to keep his or her attention focused on the task. Finally, the environment is considered a resource for creativity because it can provide physical or social stimulation to help generate ideas and to nurture these ideas. The environment additionally evaluates creativity through social judgement. An ideal pattern for a creative person might be someone who is intrinsically motivated to accomplish a task, has relevant cognitive process abilities and appropriate domain knowledge, is open to experience, has tolerance for risks, and develops within a nurturing environment. Part of being a successful creator, according to this theory, is also the willingness to defy the crowd. Sternberg (2018) expanded and developed this concept in his Triangular Theory of Creativity. Creative people need not only to defy the crowd but also to be able to defy their own beliefs and values and to defy the existing shared preconceptions of a domain. Cognitive-component approach The fourth theory is the Geneplore model (Fig. 4.4) (Finke et al. 1992) which describes the cognitive processes on which creativity is based. This theory has been considered within a broader discussion about the Cognitive-Components Approach.

4.2 Human-Centred Design Approach for Digital Creativity

53

Fig. 4.4 Representation of the geneplore model. Adapted from Finke et al. (1992)

The Geneplore model identifies generative and exploratory phases of the creative process, proposing a cyclic movement between the generative and the exploratory phases. The generative phase of creative thinking involves the construction of mental representations, called “preinventive structures”, which could have the form of various visual patterns, object forms, category exemplars, and mental models, as well as verbal combinations (Finke et al. 1992, p. 20). Generative componential processes include knowledge retrieval, idea association, synthesis, transformation, and analogical transfer. The exploratory phase of creative thinking refers to the examination, elaboration, and testing of the “preinventive structures”, interpreting them in meaningful ways, thus leading to creative insights and discoveries. Exploratory componential processes include interpretation of preinventive structures, hypothesis testing, and searching for limitations. The analysis of the componential model theories highlights the many similarities and overlaps among them. Table 4.1 compares them and presents their relationships with the multiple dimensions of the human being identified in Chap. 2. This relationship highlights one more time that creativity is an intrinsic human ability connected with the multidimensionality of the human being and therefore present in all individuals. The analysed theories have been also integrated to provide an extended consideration of all the relevant components and factors of the creator that influence the creative process.

54

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Table 4.1 Comparison of the componential theories of creativity analysed Human dimensions Huitt (2012)

Componential model of creativity Amabile (1983, 1996)

Multivariate approach Lubart et al. (2003)

Investment theory of creativity Sternberg and Lubart (1995)

Geneplore model Finke et al. (1992)

Cognitive component

Creativity relevant processes Domain relevant skills

Cognitive factors Intellectual abilities (Specific abilities, Knowledge)

Intellectual abilities thinking style knowledge

Generative componential processes Exploratory componential processes

Conative-affective factors (Specific personality traits, motivation, emotion)

Personality attributes Motivation

Environment (Physical, social)

Environment (Physical, social)

Conative component Affective component Behavioural system

Intrinsic task motivation Social environment

Spiritual component The theories have been compared also with the human dimensions to highlight the most important ones for creativity

The next chapter explores the resultant components and the set of factors selected and identified within each component.

4.3

The Factors of Creativity

The analysis of the model presented enables understanding which are the most relevant ingredients of the creator as proposed by the various authors. In this section, an integrated model is proposed considering the Amabile’s model as a leading one, implemented and enriched with relevant factors included in the other theories analysed. This integration makes possible including among the various components the most well-known factors of creativity studied, measured, and observed in the literature. Amabile’s model supports a holistic view of creativity merging both the individualistic and the sociocultural perspectives. She also considered the interconnection between “Creator” and “Creating”, meaning that in her research she evaluated how the various components intervene in the specific steps of the creative problem-solving process. The components and therefore the factors can influence not only the different stages of the process but also each other.

4.3 The Factors of Creativity

55

Fig. 4.5 Representation of the components and factors collected from the analysis

The comparison between the different theories makes possible to integrate and specify Amabile’s components and to build the frame of reference for the consequent Digital Creativity exploration. Figure 4.5 shows the overall components and factors taken into account throughout the analysis. Each of the individual components includes both relatively stable elements and elements that are amenable to development and social influences. This collection will allow a wider overview of the impact of the digital transition on a single specific factor, when possible, or more broadly on the component. The integrated components and related factors are carefully described in the following subsections. Motivation and attitude The motivation (Table 4.2) table may be considered the most important component because the term constitutes the drive for the individual to perform an activity. No amount of knowledge or creativity skills can compensate for a lack of appropriate motivation (Amabile 1988), but a high degree of proper motivation can make up for deficiencies in the other two components. This component includes both the intrinsic and the extrinsic motivation factors; progress in creative work that is a mechanism through which individuals and teams can maintain high levels of creative productivity over long periods of time, even when facing extremely difficult innovation problems; and activity meaningfulness.

56

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Table 4.2 Factors included in the Motivation and Attitude component Component

Factors

Authors

Motivate and attitude

Intrinsic motivation Extrinsic motivation Progress in the creative work Activity meaningfulness Perseverance

Amabile (1983) Amabile (1983), Sternberg and Lubart (1995) Amabile and Kramer (2011), Koo and Fishbach (2012) Staw (1990), Hackman and Oldham (1975), Amabile and Pratt (2016) Sternberg and Lubart (1991), Golann (1962), Roe (1952) Sternberg and lubart (1991), Glover (1977), Mcclelland (1956) Tierney and Farmer (2002), Sawyer (2012)

Risk taking attitude Creative self-efficacy Dealing with ambiguity Openness to experience

Barron and Harrington (1981), Golann (1963) Sawyer (2012), Carson et al. (2005), Silvia et al. (2008)

Personality attitudes that empower the individual’s creative potential have been included within this component, following the structure of the Multivariate Approach. Five main attitudinal factors, each of which helps individual to use effectively the cognitive resources, have been included in the components. These are: • Perseverance. This is the attitude to persist in doing something despite difficulties or delays in achieving success. Perseverance is the answer for people to overcome creativity blocks caused by tiredness or discouragement, or both. • Risk-taking attitude. Refers to the willingness to invest ourselves in a creative process despite the uncertainty of the outcome. • Creative self-efficacy. Refer to a person’s belief that he or she is or is not creative (Tierney and Farmer 2002). • Dealing with ambiguity. This is the ability to take action without knowing each and every detail. • Openness to experience. Includes intellectual curiosity and the ability to notice and pay close attention to things (Goldberg 1993) that contribute to increasing individual culture and critical thinking. Knowledge and skills Knowledge and skills (Table 4.3) constitute the basic raw materials and the foundation for all creative work. They help a person to avoid reinventing ideas or products that society has already experienced, to move away from the popular trends, and to produce high-quality work, notice and use beneficial chance occurrences, and devote greater cognitive resources to the processing of new ideas. This includes domain knowledge, technical skills for doing a specific activity and

4.3 The Factors of Creativity

57

Table 4.3 Factors included in the Knowledge and Skills component Component

Factors

Authors

Knowledge and skills

Domain knowledge

Amabile (1983), Sternberg and Lubart (1996) Amabile (1983) Amabile (1983) Roth (1973)

Technical skills Special talent in the domain Understanding the design process

advancing one’s knowledge in the domain, and special talents in the domain. These factors represent the individual’s complete set of response possibilities that could support the synthesis of a new response and the judgemental information and expertise to evaluate the response possibilities (Amabile 1983). Understand the creative process is also a skill included that means having confidence with the process for carrying out creative work. The component could include other skills that will be considered fundamental to increase the creative potential of an individual in the digital era. Creativity-relevant processes The creativity-relevant processes component (Table 4.4) includes the processes and abilities needed to combine the raw material in new ways. With a high level of knowledge and skills, the individual will produce a good performance from the technical point of view, but he will not produce a creative work if the creativity-relevant processes component is lacking. Again, with equal levels of motivation and knowledge and skills, individuals who are working on the same problem will obtain different results on the basis of the amount of the creativity-relevant processes. The factors included in this component comes from Amabile’s studies, the Intelligence component proposed by Sternberg and Lubart in their Investment Theory, and the cognitive approaches of creativity studies. They focus mainly on the cognitive processes that contribute to creative acts and that reveal the psychological mechanisms that make creativity possible. Among these processes, the following factors have been selected because they are considered interesting and relevant for this study: • Memory retrieval. Cognitive process of recalling and re-accessing information or events from the past already encoded and stored in the mind. • Analogical reasoning and association. Cognitive ability to transfer or map knowledge from one domain to another, making links and connections. • Conceptual combination. Cognitive ability to combine two or more concepts to create interesting and new conceptual discovery and possibilities. • Creative visualisation. The mental synthesis and transformation of visual images on which is based our everyday thinking to provide various creative possibilities.

58

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Table 4.4 Factors included in the creativity-relevant processes component Component

Factors

Authors

Creativity relevant processes

Memory retrieval Analogic reasoning and association Conceptual combination Creative visualization Structures imagination Reflection in action Shifting perspective Fixation Idea evaluation and reputation Intellectual block

Finke (1996), Wang et al. (2010) Finke (1996) Smith et al. (1995) Smith et al. (1995) Ward (1991a), Smith et al. (1995) Schon (1983) Amabile (1983), De Bono (1970) Smith et al. (1995) Oldham and Baer (2012), Yuan and Zhou (2008) Roth (1973)

• Structured imagination. Process that occurs when individuals perform a task in which they must generate an innovative entity such as novel objects, events, settings, etc. Imagination requires the ability to transcend the reality knowledge, expanding it and accessing in other dimensions. • Reflection-in-action. Process of reflecting on the situation and the task at hand while changes can still be made to affect the outcome. It is an integral part of true learning. • Shifting perspective. Approach and cognitive style that enables observation of a problem from multiple angles, while apprehending information from various different perspectives. • Fixation. Process that interferes during creative reasoning and leads the creator to become fixated on a small number of unvaried solutions. • Idea evaluation and reputation. The evaluative pressure and the expectation of a negative evaluation increase the fear of expressing ideas to others, leading individuals to self-censor the ideas they produce and to generate fewer ones • Intellectual block. It occurs when information is incorrectly collected, formulated, and processed; this can be caused by a lack of information that doesn’t provide the amount of knowledge needed for creativity, or by incorrect information that doesn’t allow formulating ideas in line with the problem at hand. Emotion Emotion (Table 4.5) has become a fundamental component to be included among the creator ingredients following the structure of the Multivariate Approach that considers the emotional component as an important influencer of individual creative potential. In the first formulation of Amabile’s Componential Theory, emotion was not included. It appears as a factor, named positive affect, in the later revised formulation (Amabile and Pratt 2016) in which it was recognized as a crucial factor. Positive affect refers to the positive emotions, feelings, and expression, including

4.3 The Factors of Creativity

59

Table 4.5 Factors included in the emotion component Component

Factors

Authors

Emotion

Positive affect Playfulness

Amabile and Pratt (2016), Fredrickson (2001) Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989), Russ (2003)

cheerfulness, pride, enthusiasm, energy, and joy (Barsade et al. 2003; Gooty et al. 2010) that we experience and display, especially in terms of how these emotions influence our actions and decisions. The emotional component of the multivariate approach corresponds to emotional traits and states (Botella et al. 2011; Zenasni and Lubart 2008). For example, emotional clarity and the capacity to perceive feelings are positively correlated with creative performance (George and Zhou 2002). Also, emotional intelligence enables a better perception of the emotional environment, thus favoring creative outputs. Playfulness is a factor included since it facilitates divergent thinking (i.e. a process that generates a variety of ideas and associations with a given problem) because it can fuel the environment with a sense of positive challenge that motivates people (Clore et al. 1994). Environment Environment (Table 4.6) represents the context in which the creative activity happens since creativity cannot be viewed outside an environmental context. The focus is not on a specific context but rather provides an overview of the environmental factors that can intervene in any domain. Therefore, the environment is considered at the general domain level, drawing on the idea proposed by Lubart and Sternberg, which in addition to the social factors also takes into account material factors.

Table 4.6 Factors included in the environment component Component

Factors

Authors

Environment

Physical space set up

Ward (1969), Amabile and Gitomer (1984) Amabile (1983), Anderson (2008) Amabile (1983) Amabile (1983), Amabile and Pratt (2016) Amabile (1983) Osborn (1963) Csikszentmihalyi (1988), Amabile (1983) Amabile (1983) Amabile (1991)

Access to knowledge resources Reward mechanisms and recognition Emotional and technical support from others Sharing ideas to others Generating ideas with others Mentorship Multidisciplinarity Autonomy

60

4 Design and Digital Creativity

According to Lubart and Sternberg (1995), environments can provide physical or social stimulation, either of which helps new ideas to form by “jump-starting” a person’s thinking processes, positively and negatively stimulating the other components. The factors included in the social component are intended to be characteristic of the social environment and condition within the social environment that facilitates or inhibits creativity. Only the positive aspects have been taken into account, these are: • Physical space. Experimental research showed that some environments are set up to provide the bases for lots of creative sparks, while others are not (Ward 1969). • Access to knowledge resources. The access and exposure to pockets of information such as ideas, perspectives, and approaches different from each other, contributes to creativity by providing fresh and diverse ideas. • Reward mechanisms and recognition. Being recognised for the work done can nurture extrinsic motivation and therefore creativity. This can be both a social and a material recognition that activates a reward mechanism that drives extrinsic motivation. • Emotional and technical support from others. Support from others for the production of ideas that may be either socioemotional or instrumental (i.e. providing some resources or supporting in fighting an obstacle), aid in persisting when developing and refining ideas. • Generating ideas with others. The collaborative idea-generation mechanism supports the production of ideas and participative decision-making. Brainstorming is an example of a technique used to generate ideas within a group. • Sharing ideas with others. Stimulates a diversification of ideas and a greater possibility of turning the light on, especially when combined with multidisciplinarity. • Mentorship. It refers to evaluating ideas and providing feedback and suggestions, which is relevant for creativity. It provides a subjective evaluation of a product’s creativity or an individual’s creative performance. • Autonomy. Freedom and discretion in managing the challenge and the creative process, as well as selecting sources for data collection and for managing and controlling the flow of information. This factor increases motivation.

4.4

The Creative Process

The previous section has been dedicated to the identification of the “Creator” ingredients to be observed in the Digital Creativity domain. We now focus a bit more on the “Creation” facets—meaning the creative process—and on the relationships between the two aspects.

4.4 The Creative Process

61

The creative process can be defined as “the succession of thoughts and actions that lead to original and adapted ideas” (Lubart et al. 2003, p. 85). In this regard, the creative process refers to the application of the creative ability of the person to a creative type of production. The “succession” signifies that there is a chain of events, which unrolls over time, with a beginning and, potentially, an end. This sequence may be nonlinear, and it may be characterized by steps or phases or activities that come into play at certain moments in the chain of events. “Thoughts and actions” refer to both internal and external operations that contribute to the emerging production, which may be a tangible or intangible thing that is expressed in some form. The reference to “original” is important because this corresponds to the standard definition of creativity (Runco and Jaeger 2012). Poincaré (1985) in his well-known introspective account of the creative process proposed that the creative process starts with conscious work on a problem. Then a period of unconscious work follows and results in an insight, a “sudden illumination.” The cycle back to conscious work then occurs, called the verification stage, “to put in shape the results of this inspiration,” to explore the consequences and to formalise ideas (p. 27). Based on the introspective reports of eminent creators, Wallas (2014) proposed the first model of creative activity describing four main stages: (i) preparation, based on exploring the problem and acquiring knowledge; (ii) incubation, characterised as a period of latency and subconscious activity; (iii) illumination or the “Aha! moment”, in which the sudden appearance of a creative solution takes place; (iv) verification, in which the validity and utility of the solution are tested. A specific segment of the creativity literature is indeed devoted to modelling the creative thinking process through diversified representations of the steps and mechanisms activated in the creative mind during the generation of new ideas (Lubart 2001; Mumford et al. 2013). The simplest model of the creative process is a two-stage model sometimes called “the balloon”—an expanding stage of divergent thinking where many possibilities are generated, followed by convergent thinking as one converges on the one best idea. Most of the creative process models proposed in the literature have expanded upon the simple balloon model to propose four or more stages, giving us a deeper understanding of the mental activities that people engage in while they are creating. Sawyer (2012) proposed an integrated framework that captures the key stages of several various models that psychologists have proposed (p. 89). In eight main steps, he includes both a problem-finding and a problem-solving approach stating that the first, indispensable step is to ask the right question to identify and formulate the problem. According to his action theory model, creativity occurs when people are working on ill-defined problems (p. 90). All the models are considered as domain general, meaning that they can be applied in different domains. Research studies that explore the creative process in specific fields are rare, but they show some unique process facets that depend on the particular field (Lubart 2018, p. 13).

62

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Since the mid-twentieth century, cognitive approaches to the creative process have focused on revealing the psychological mechanisms that make creativity possible. However, the creative process involves more than cognitive components alone (Botella et al. 2011) and is not exclusively individual-based. The creative person cannot be separated from his or her environment or particular situation, and an adequate model of creative process needs to take into account features of the social and material world. Creativity takes place over time, and most of the creativity occurs while doing the work. The medium is an essential part of the creative process, and creators often get ideas while working with their materials. (Sawyer 2012, p. 88)

This definition calls for an articulation of multiple elements and levels of analysis and shifts the focus from the creative individual to the ‘in between’ space of creator and environment, creator and society. The creative process can therefore be considered simultaneously a mental cognitive process happening in the mind of the creator and a practice happening in the material world through a series of individual and/or social activities. This view leads to a more comprehensive view of the process in its double psychological and behavioural manifestations, as it is the design process. The design process constitutes the approach and the process that the designer used to come up with solutions that are both new, original, and adapted to future users and usages (Bonnardel 2006, 2012), and therefore requires creativity (Bonnardel et al. 2018). A creative approach in design situations requires both a divergent mode defined as the enlargement of the search area for creative ideas and a convergent mode that supports the definition of a focus (Bonnardel 2000, 2006). Creativity in design is therefore dependent on both the individual who creates the new products through a process and the environment and society in which these products are created (Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Lubart et al. 2003). Therefore, the intervention of the creator’s ingredients in the creative and design process inevitably contributes to the improvement of the output to be realised. Amabile has devoted much thought to how these elements intervene in the various stages of the creative problem-solving process. She defined the creative process as composed by several phases that do not necessarily occur in a fixed sequence; these phases are: (i) problem or task identification; (ii) preparation (gathering relevant information); (iii) idea generation (seeking and producing potential responses); and (iv) idea validation and communication (testing the possible response). The outcome of this process may be a successful product, a failure, or some progress toward one’s goal that leads to a return to one or more phases in the process. Each component is proposed to be especially influential for creativity during certain phases of the work on a task and not others. For example, motivation is particularly important for identifying a problem to work on and to initiate the process. It also plays an important role in the idea-generation phase, such as through the effort expended to generate and explore

4.4 The Creative Process

63

possible responses. Certain types of extrinsic motivation can be beneficial for collecting information and the validation of ideas because these phases may involve substantial work but do not focus on producing novel ideas. Also, knowledge and skills play a key role in the preparation and idea-validation phases. Creativityrelevant processes are important for the generation phase. Motivation can also lead to the acquisition of knowledge and skills and promote the application of creativity-relevant processes. For design practice is extremely important to have knowledge of how the different components and factors intervene in the creative and design process. This makes possible creation of methods and tools that can empower a specific moment in a creative process by stimulating, enhancing, and nurturing the components and factors that intervene in that specific moment. This is fundamental to guide humans towards a creative empowerment. The question that we should ask now is whether or not the collected factors are in line with the digital evolution and the human changes occurring in the digital era. Are there new fundamental factors emerging from the digital evolution to be included? How are the digital tools and environments influencing, supporting, and enhancing the creative process and the human factors of creativity? Chapter 5 and 6 will answer these questions in the exploration of the Digital Creativity domain.

References Amabile, T.M.: The social psychology of creativity: a componential conceptualization. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45(2), 357 (1983) Amabile, T.M.: A model of creativity and innovation in organizations. Res. Org. Behav., 123–167 (1988) Amabile, T.M.: Foundations of individual creativity. Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behaviour, Ed. Staw, BM, MacMillan, NY, 537–558 (1991) Amabile, T.M.: Creativity and innovation in organizations. In: Harvard Business School Background Note, pp. 396–239 (1996) Amabile, T.M., Gitomer, J.: Children's artistic creativity: Effects of choice in task materials. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10(2), 209–215 (1984) Amabile, T.M., Kramer, S.J.: The power of small wins. Harvard Busi. Rev. 89(5), 70–80 (2011) Amabile, T.M., Pratt, M.G.: The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: making progress, making meaning. Res. Org. Behav. 36, 157–183 (2016) Anderson, M.H.: Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. J. Org. Behav. 29, 51–78 (2008) Barron, F., Harrington, D.: Creativity, intelligence, and personality. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 32, 439–476 (1981) Barsade, S.G., Brief, A.P., Spataro, S.E.: The affective revolution in organizational behavior: The emergence of a paradigm. Org. Behav.: The State Sci., 3–52 (2003) Bonnardel, N.: Towards understanding and supporting creativity in design: analogies in a constrained cognitive environment. Knowl.-Based Syst. 13, 505–513 (2000) Bonnardel, N.: Créativité et conception: Approches cognitives et ergonomiques. De Boeck, Brussels (2006)

64

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Bonnardel, N.: Designing future products: what difficulties do designers encounter and how can their creative process be supported? Work, A J. Prevention, Assess. Rehab. 41, 5296–5303 (2012) Bonnardel, N., Wojtczuk, A., Gilles, P.Y., Mazon, S.: The creative process in design. In: Lubart, T. (ed.) The Creative Process: Perspectives from Multiple Domains, pp. 229–254. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, London (2018) Botella, M., Zenasni, F., Lubart, T.I.: Alexithymia and affective intensity of art students. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 5(3), 251–257 (2011) Botella, M., Glaveanu, V.P., Zenasni, F., Storme, M., Myszkowsi, N., Lubart, T.: How artists create: creative process and multivariate factors. Learn. Individ. Differ. 26(20), 161–170 (2013) Carson, S.H., Peterson, J.B., Higgins, D.M.: Reliability, validity, and factor structure of the creative achievement questionnaire. Creat. Res. J. 17(1), 37–50 (2005) Clore, G.L., Schwarz, N., Conway, M.: Cognitive causes and consequences of emotion. In: Wyer, R.S., Srull, T.K. (eds.) Handbook of Social Cognition, pp. 323–417. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ (1994) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Society, culture, and person: a systems view of creativity. In R.J. Sternberg (ED.), The nature of creativity. Cambridge University Press, New York, 325–339 (1988) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: The creative personality. Psychol. Today 29(4), 36–40 (1996) Csikszentmihalyi, M., LeFevre, J.: Optimal experience in work and leisure. J. Person. Soc. Psych. 56(5), 815 (1989) De Bono, E.: Lateral thinking: Creativity step by step. Harper & Row, New York (1970) Dewey, J.: Art as Experience. Penguin, New York (1934) Finke, R.A.: Imagery, creativity, and emergent structure. Consciousness and cognition 5(3), 381–393 (1996) Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M.: Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1992) Fredrickson, B.L.: The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Am. Psych. 56(3), 218 (2001) George, J.M., Zhou, J.: Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don’t: the role of context and clarity of feelings. J. Appl. Psychol. 87(4), 687 (2002) Glover, J.A.: Risky shift and creativity. Soc. Behav. Person. Int. J. 5(2), 317–320 (1977) Goldberg, L.R.: The structure of phenotypic personality traits. Am. Psychol. 48(1), 26–34 (1993) Golann, S.E.: The creativity motive. J. Person. (1962) Golann, S.E. Psychological study of creativity. Psychol Bulletin 60(6), 548 (1963) Gooty, J., Connelly, S., Griffith, J., Gupta, A.: Leadership, affect and emotions: a state of the science review. Leadersh. Q. 21(6), 979–1004 (2010) Hackman, J.R., Oldham, G.R.: Development of the job diagnostic survey. J. Appl. Psychol. 60(2), 159 (1975) Helson, R.: Personality. In: Runco, M.A., Pritzker, S.R. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Creativity, vol. 2, pp. 361–371. Academic Press, New York (1999) Huitt, W.: A systems approach to the study of human behavior. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA (2012). Retrieved from http://www. edpsycinteractive.org/materials/sysmdlo.html, last accessed 2020/12/15 Kozbelt, A., Beghetto, R.A., Runco, M.A.: Theories of creativity. In: Kaufman, J.C., Sternberg, R. J. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press (2010) Koo, M., Fishbach, A.: The small-area hypothesis: Effects of progress monitoring on goal adherence. J. Consum. Res. 39(3), 493–509 (2012) Levy, B., Langer, E.: Aging. In: Runco, M.A., Pritzker, S.R. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Creativity, vol. 1, pp. 45–52. Academic Press, New York (1999) Lubart, T.I.: Componential models. In: Runco, M.A., Pritzker, S.R. (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Creativity, vol. 1, pp. 295–300. Academic Press, New York (1999) Lubart, T.: Models of the creative process: past, present and future. Creat. Res. J. 13, 295–308 (2001) Lubart, T.: The 7 C’s of creativity. J. Creat. Behav. 51(4), 293–296 (2017)

References

65

Lubart, T.: The Creative Process: Perspectives from Multiple Domains. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, Paris (2018) Lubart, T.I., Mouchiroud, C., Tordjman, S., Zenasni, F.: Psychologie de la créativité [Psychology of Creativity]. Armand Collin, Paris (2003) Lubart, T., Guignard, J.H.: The generality-specificity of creativity: a multivariate approach. In: Sternberg, R.J., Grigorenko, E.L., Singer, J.L. (eds.) Creativity: From Potential to Realization, pp. 43–56. American Psychological Association (2004) McClelland, D.C.: Some social consequences of achievement motivation. Wesleyan Univ Middletown CT (1956) Mumford, M.D., Giorgini, V., Gibson, C., Mecca, J.: Creative thinking: processes, strategies and knowledge. In: Handbook of Research on Creativity. Edward Elgar Publishing (2013) Oldham, G.R., Baer, M.: Creativity and the work context. In M. Mumford (Ed.), Handbook of organizational creativity. Elsevier, San Diego, CA, 387–420 (2012) Osborn, A.F.: Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative thinking (3rd ed.) Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York (1963) Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A., Dow, G.T.: Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educ. Psychol. 39(2), 83–96 (2004) Poincaré, H.: Mathematical creation. In: Ghiselin, B. (ed.) The Creative Process: A Symposium. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 22–31 (1985) (Original work published 1908) Rhodes, M.: An analysis of creativity. The Phi Delta Kappan 42(7), 305–310 (1961) Roe, A.: A psychologist examines 64 eminent scientists. Scientific American, 187(5), 21–25 (1952) Roth, B.: Design Process and Creativity (1973). Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/ resources/bernie-rothtreatise-on-design-thinking, last accessed 2019/12/15 Runco, M.A.: Education for creative potential. Scandinavian J. Educ. 47, 317–324 (2003) Runco, M.A.: Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice. Elsevier Academic Press, San Diego, CA (2007) Runco, M.A., Jaeger, G.J.: The standard definition of creativity. Creat. Res. J. 24(1), 92–96 (2012) Russ, S.W.: Play and creativity: Developmental issues. Scandinavian J. Educat. Res. 47(3), 291–303 (2003) Sawyer, R.K.: Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. University Press, Oxford (2012) Schon, D.A.: The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books, New York (1983) Simonton, D.K.: In: Runco, M.A., Albert, R.S. (eds.) Theories of Creativity. Sage, Newbury Park, CA (1990) Silvia, P.J., Winterstein, B.P., Willse, J.T., Barona, C.M., Cram, J.T., Hess, K.I., et al.: Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2(2), 68 (2008) Smith, S.M., Ward, T.B., Finke, R.A.: Cognitive processes in creative contexts. The creative cognition approach, 1–7 (1995) Staw, B.M.: An evolutionary approach to creativity and innovation (1990) Sternberg, R.J.: A triangular theory of creativity. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 12(1), 50 (2018) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: An investment theory of creativity and its development. Hum. Dev. 34(1), 1–31 (1991) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: Buy low and sell high: an investment approach to creativity. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 1(1), 1–5 (1992) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity. Free Press, New York (1995) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: Investing in creativity. Am. Psychol. 51(7), 677–688 (1996) Tierney, P.A., Farmer, S.M.: Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance. Acad. Manag. J. 45(6), 1137–1148 (2002) Wallas G.: The Art of Thought, First Ed. 1926. Solis Press (2014)

66

4 Design and Digital Creativity

Wang, H.-C., Cosley, D., Fussell, S.R.: Idea Expander: Supporting group brainstorming with conversationally triggered visual thinking stimuli. Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work, 103–106 (2010) Ward, W.C.: Creativity and environmental cues in nursery school children. Dev. Psychol. 1(5), 543 (1969) Ward, T.B.: Structured imagination in film: The case of “Star Wars” Unpublished Manuscript (1991a) Yuan, F., Zhou, J.: Differential effects of expected external evaluation on different parts of the creative idea production process and on final product creativity. Creat. Res. J. 20(4), 391–403 (2008) Zenasni, F., Lubart, T.I.: Emotion-related traits moderate the impact of emotional state on creative performances. J. Individ. Differ. 29(3), 157–167 (2008)

Chapter 5

Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive and Negative Influences on Creativity

5.1

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the most discussed positive and negative influences on creativity in the digital age, analysed through a design-oriented perspective. The factors of creativity collected have been used as a lens to determine whether a specific impact brought by the digital transition could be considered as influencing creativity or not. Indeed, the influences are emerging as a consequence of the co-evolution between human beings and digital technologies and their widespread adoption by society, as discussed in Chap. 2. The influences identified are the result of a first exploration of the Digital Creativity domain carried out through multiple desk research iterations and the interconnections between the diverse information identified. The overview here presented represents a cluster of recognised influences in the literature and should not be considered as an exhaustive collection. With respect to the investigation done, the following interesting reflections have emerged: • the digital transition has created a new virtual dimension that constitutes a new environment of action for creativity, especially for digitally enhanced people, in which sharing and participating are becoming a veritable mindset. This digital reality represents a second driving force for the development of an individual’s creative potential because it allows people more often to put their creative abilities into play, stimulating and strengthening their own cognitive processes when supported by peers. For example, in online creative communities, each individual creates independently within a community in which he or she receives support and where the work of others give input to the creations whose output can in turn benefit the work of others. In this context, sharing becomes the basis for the activation of the creative process. The social aspect of creativity has become increasingly empowered surely for the amounts of tools and platforms that improve group collaboration at a distance, but also for the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_5

67

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

68

diffused possibilities of social and intellectual support available in these times. Knowledge born when shared and the digital transition has increasingly provided tools to access and benefit from these new opportunities. The use of controlled immersive and virtual environments could also stimulate collaboration even at a distance, thus transcending some cognitive blocks. • Within the psychological literature on creativity, new perspectives for its observation and definition have emerged due to the advent of digital technologies. These new perspectives have brought attention to new influences for creativity that depend on the sociocultural and technological changes of the phenomenon of transition. For example, social acceptance and interaction with successful ideas and projects can enhance motivation as well as mentorship that becomes more distributed, supporting self-reflection and encouraging the emotional component when carrying out one’s own idea. • New potential factors of creativity emerge, such as digital literacy, which is fundamental to develop the awareness of digital technology. This is connected to one important emerging factor, i.e., the ability to manage the abundance of information. Indeed, a large amount of information on the one hand can provide a great inspiration when it comes to identifying a new focus or vision at the beginning of a project, but on the other hand it can cause an intellectual block within the process due to a lack of ability and maturity to choose the appropriate information for the definition of the project. Developing a digital literacy means also being able to manage the abundance of information. Other factors are collaboration and network building skills and communication skills. • The factors within the creativity-relevant processes component are the most influenced, followed by the motivation and attitude factors since the digital transition provides new stimuli and opportunities to engage people in creative activities. The emotional factors are the least influenced and are connected to the adoption of immersive virtual environments.

5.2

New Challenges for Creativity Cognitive Processes

This section highlights some of the main positive and negative influences identified by interconnecting the impacts of the digital era on the cognitive components of human beings (see p. 28) and the collected factors of creativity. Those influences address mainly the factors within the cognitive components such has “creativity-relevant processes” and “knowledge and skills” that are involved in a creative process (Table 5.1). Reducing deep processing abilities The structure and nature of the online environment, considered as a global hypertext in which it is very simple to surf from one page to another through “hyperlinks”, can lead to a reduced learning effort that happens due to quick

5.2 New Challenges for Creativity Cognitive Processes

69

Table 5.1 Summarises how the impacts brought by the digital transition on the human cognitive component can positively and/or negatively influence creativity Impacts on human beings

Factors of creativity influenced

Negative influence

Changes of reading and information processing abilities

• Intellectual block • Memory retrieval • Domain knowledge • Openness to experience • Reflection in action

Reducing deep processing abilities

Increase the amount of (available) information to manage

• Conceptual combination • Intellectual block Increase of multitasking • Intellectual block behaviour • Intrinsic motivation • Extrinsic motivation • Perseverance • Positive affect • Playfulness • Digital literacy Needs of new cognitive skills • Communication skills • Collaboration and network-building skills The influence has been identified by relating the

Positive influence

Speeding up the exploration of information Augmenting the cognitive overload of information Reducing perseverance and average attention span/focus

Demanding new skills for creative practice

impacts to the factors of creativity

scanning of information. The increased presence of the hypertext environment reduces the cognitive resources required for deep processing, and the ease of online information retrieval reduces the need for deep processing to commit information to memory. Also, the way in which information are presented on social networks, or blogs, is conducive to a “shallow mode” of learning for the digitally enhanced generation in which there is a loss in deep reading abilities. This could have tremendous impact on the ability to process information deeply, reducing critical thinking about the information and memory consolidation. Johnson (2006, p. 22) recounts how reading can start the mental work of processing and storing information, invoking powers of imagination, intermixing ideas from different disciplines, that have allowed a new synaptic configuration over time. A decrease in deep reading abilities causes drastic consequences not on the ability to create but on the quality of the creation, given by the inability to select the most interesting and appropriate information.

70

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

The shallow mode of learning is also connected to a reduction in long-term memory that could have repercussions on the development of the individual culture and on the process of memory retrieval important for the quality and the originality of ideas and projects (Tian et al. 2018). To overcome these inhibiting conditions caused by the internet environment, it becomes fundamental to support and foster deep reading skills and attitudes, as well as curiosity and observation. These are fundamental attitudes that allow a person to go beyond the exploration of information from various different sources, not mediated only by the search engine. Indeed, a search engine could distort and standardize knowledge since they rank the results based on the selected keywords and on the user profile. Speeding up the exploration of information The internet and web-browsing technologies allow one to store and immediately make available to all a large quantity of ideas and information that can be easily collected, enabling fast elaboration and integration, speeding up the process of creation. This is the positive side related to the abundance of information provided by the digital era. Many researchers have studied how the internet environment is valuable for the collection and dissemination of information. For example, according to researchers (Greene 2002; Shneidermen 2007), the digital environment supports the creative process in knowledge gathering, knowledge sharing, and knowledge integration, as well as idea generation. This abundance of information and always available visual stimuli, makes it possible to quickly identify and extract ideas, concepts and information that we need and to combine new ideas faster. The literature (Small and Vorgan 2008) reports that the human brain can learn to react more quickly to visual stimuli and develop a better ability to sift through large amounts of information rapidly and decide what’s important and what is not. But there is no scientific evidence of that yet. Augmenting the cognitive overload of information At the same time, the abundance can cause the so-called information overload that exponentially decreases human decision-making ability. The resulting information overload blows up the divergent phase of the creative process, weakening the conceptual combination process in the convergent phase, creating difficulties in combining and integrating the information when attempting to form new ideas (Huber 1990), as well as in isolating the problem. Creativity doesn’t require a large amount of information to generate breakthrough ideas (Corazza and Agnoli 2015). Too much information can lead to the availability of too many ideas and perspectives to effectively screen, process, and integrate, decreasing the ability to select the most interesting and appropriate information. Therefore, in the digital era, it has become increasingly important to develop an ability to manage the abundance of information and to learn where to find the most useful and reliable knowledge.

5.2 New Challenges for Creativity Cognitive Processes

71

Reducing perseverance and average attention span/focus The presence of digital devices conducive to multitasking behaviour, as well as the constant availability of solutions, stimuli, and activities has increased distractibility and reduced average attention spans and focus. Consider, for example, the multitude of notifications we continuously receive from our phones, laptops, social networks, and emails that constitute inputs for our brain, making us yet more unable to reflect. The digital transition is accelerating our cognitive activity, generating the pressure to achieve immediate results. This can be very harmful for patience, determination, and grit, which are the ingredients of perseverance, an attitude that represents the foundation of creativity. Indeed, perseverance (Prabhu et al. 2008) is essential to be able to pursue a creative task for as long as it takes to achieve significant results because originality is almost never associated with the first-hand response. Perseverance can be weakened by the digital transition and therefore needs to be trained and stimulated. Researchers (Shapiro and Niederhauser 2004; Moos and Marroquin 2010; Carrier et al. 2015; Ie et al. 2012; Rosen et al. 2011) have noted the importance of motivation and positive affect in moderating the distractibility by the Internet technology. Multitasking with action video games can produce improvements in attention abilities. Demanding new skills for creative practice From the analysis of the current scenario of transition emerges how fundamental it is in the digital era to develop skills to master the new digital devices and technologies and to face the complexity of a continuous and an ever-changing environment. Digital technologies have become so pervasive in our everyday life and have reached a level of development that can support human beings in many daily activities, even becoming a partner in the creative process (Lubart 2005). In this age, it has become extremely important to develop digital literacy— meaning both the acquisition of digital skills and the understanding of the potentialities of digital technologies in terms of social and cultural opportunities (Glister and Glister 1997; Bawden 2008). These competences enable exploring and anticipating opportunities and needs and adopting cutting-edge technologies at their service. Additionally, their deep understanding and the awareness in their use, allow also to employ the right tool or technology to empower the creative process, thus producing original results. Developing digital literacy means also being able to evaluate information and assemble knowledge found on the internet, together with a set of understandings and attitudes. This is connected with the abundance of information that we can find on the internet, as already discussed, which requires people to develop an ability to manage this abundance and learn how and where to find the most useful and reliable knowledge. The increased complexity and uncertainty of the contemporary challenges require more often than ever to work in multidisciplinary teams or to build bridges

72

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

and networks to connect with information specialists or project stakeholders. This requires developing collaboration and network-building skills, as well as communication skills. Effective communication and collaboration abilities involve the evaluation of the appropriate channels for diverse situations and getting things done, while developing and maintaining partnerships, negotiating skills, teambuilding skills, decision making and conflict resolution (Houston 2007).

5.3

New Tools, Stimuli, and Creative Behaviour

This section highlights some of the main positive and negative influences identified by interconnecting the impacts of the digital era on the affective, conative, and behavioural components of human beings (see p. 32) and the factors of creativity collected. Those influences address mainly the “motivation and attitude” and “creativity-relevant processes” factors that are involved in a creative process (Table 5.2). Providing opportunities and tools for self-expression and self-discovery Human beings today have access to sophisticated tools for rich media-content creation, sharing of ideas, discussion, and distribution. Today it is possible to produce music, write and edit books, and produce digital art, all with minimal cost and with online tools or equipment that can easily fit into any private residence. According to Atkinson (2006), the democratisation of digital technologies enables people to create more personal meaning in their own environment, providing space to express their self-identity, talents, and attitudes. This is becoming a trend in this era, also supported by the great diffusion of makerspaces and FabLabs, which are improving access to technologies by more people with minimal digital literacy. This is also due to the design and diffusion of digital tools that follow the same philosophy. This is opening a new dimension in which human beings can express their own inner feelings, ideas, and visions, transforming and giving shape to whatever imagination can generate. Self-expression can be considered therefore a newly important motivational factor for digitally enhanced people, capable of maintaining a high level of engagement and participation throughout the entire creative process. All humans are creative, but for most of us the main problem we have is the lack of opportunities to find the right domain to express our inner ideas and exteriorize them through creative productions. Robinson (2010) defines this discovery of the right domain as encountering “the element”, the activity in which we feel comfortable enough, in which our passion opens path to go beyond our own limitations. Digital technologies can be used as creative technologies (Zagalo and Branco 2015) in the sense that they allow for self-exploration of personal and creative aptitudes, helping human beings to flourish. They enable understanding and identifying a

5.3 New Tools, Stimuli, and Creative Behaviour

73

Table 5.2 Summarises how the impacts brought by the digital transition on the human affective, conative, and behavioural components can positively and/or negatively influence creativity Impacts on human beings

Factors of creativity influenced

New opportunities and spaces for creative activity

• Intrinsic motivation • Activity meaningfulness • Self-expression • Risk-taking attitude • Creative self-efficacy • Extrinsic motivation

Promote well-being and personal satisfaction

Negative influence

Providing opportunites and tools for self-expression and self-discovery

Increasing addition to reward mechanisms

• Analogical reasoning and association • Conceptual combination • Structured imagination • Shifting imagination • Domain knowledge • Technical skills Live in two interconnected • Memory retrieval realities • Analogical reasoning and association • Conceptual combination • Creative visualisation • Structured imagination • Shifting perspective • Intrinsic motivation • Openness to experience The influence has been identified by relating the impacts to the factors Support and improvement of human performance

Positive influence

Providing opportunities and tools to access knowledge from distributed and open sources

Interacting with inspiring digital contents, ideas, and projects

of creativity

creative domain in which we feel more creative and developing a high level of creative self-efficacy (i.e. a person’s belief that he or she is or is not creative (Tierney and Farmer 2002), which is a fundamental factor to initiate the process and to accomplish a task with successful results. Digital tools and technologies are not supposed to improve people’s capabilities, but to help them to find their own unique creative skills, and so to output them to the world. Feelings of self-efficacy around a particular task have been found to influence an individual’s effort and persistence in that task (Bandura 1997). In one of the studies based on interviews, Gauntlett (2017) highlighted that many creators reported that, becoming engaged in a creative way with the physical activity of making, enhanced their sense of well-being and happiness, for example,

74

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

by promoting creative problem-solving skills and improving their confidence. They reported experiencing a sense of ‘flow’, a state of happiness associated with being fully absorbed in the task at hand, which has been the subject of extensive research in the fields of design, management, the psychology of happiness, and elsewhere (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Given the increasing use of mobile devices, people can engage in online participation at almost any time, empowering the integration of creative activities into everyday life. According to Jenkins and Bertozzi (2008), this integration is particularly relevant in the case of youth who make seamless connections between creative action and other social and quotidian activities. Creative technologies are more frequently used in the educational context, where the adoption of digital and online tools is intended as means to engage students, to play with, and to teach, so that, at a young age, they facilitate individuals to self-discover their own creative attitude. Increasing addiction to reward mechanisms The internet environment can offer individuals a highly stimulating and rewarding experience. A widely acknowledged scenario is apparent from social networks, in which “the like” mechanisms, the “view” on YouTube, or the blogs reviews and comments provide users with pleasurable returns. This is known to strongly reinforce reward-pursuing behaviours that are commonly associated with compulsive behaviours (Knapp 1976). Recent research has proven that people with this form of internet addicted behaviour exhibit differences in the way they process rewards during decision-making tasks. Indeed, they are strongly driven by immediate rewards in their decisions, even in the face of potential losses and reduced reward probabilities (Pawlikowski and Brand 2011). The reward mechanisms have been recognised (Amabile 1988) as a factor that can influence the external motivation primarily driving participation and engagement during the creative process. In the last years, there was an explosive adoption of gamification rules and mechanisms to increase people’s engagement in activities and projects, both for the presence of a reward-rule that is part of the game itself and for the playfulness intrinsic in the game-like nature. Due to its implications on decision making, it is therefore important to use these mechanisms with moderation. Opportunities and tools to access knowledge from distributed and open sources In this era of transition, the level of connectivity between human beings has become unprecedented, increasing therefore the variety of sources from which to access information and knowledge. Access to knowledge resources has already been recognised has a factor that can influence individual creativity and the variety of different distributed sources is boosting the individual creative potential because it constantly provides people with access to new, diverse, and distributed information (Oldham and Da Silva 2016). Resources could range from knowledge repository and information specialists (Dewett 2003) in the case of an individual or a community of experts to a broad

5.3 New Tools, Stimuli, and Creative Behaviour

75

network of diverse non-specialists who might have different ideas or perspectives, necessary to develop fresh new ideas. The digital transition is providing new opportunities and new tools/platform for collecting data and knowledge directly from the crowds, in order to benefit from the shared, distributed, and open knowledge available today. The recent trend of big data enables companies to become more creative in locating potentially loyal customers using digital technologies that provide excellent data-mining mechanisms to identify target customers with high effectiveness and efficiency (Lee 2013). This will make possible collecting diversified information and finding new inspiration from unexpected information, amplifying the possibilities of an aha moment. Creative projects are nurtured and developed within a social structure, in particular, within a community of practice (Glăveanu 2011). According to the evidence provided by the literature on the social aspects of creativity (Burt 2004), the generation of new ideas or visions is often the result of interaction with multiple acquaintances, possibly with different cultural backgrounds, favouring the so-called brokerage of knowledge. As a consequence, we can state that, in this era, practically everyone can be subject and interact with very diversified cultural environments, increasing the potential attention for generating new types of vision, compared to the past. Interacting with inspiring digital contents, ideas, and projects The abundance of ideas and projects presented in various different shapes in the internet environment can constitute a positive stimulus for creativity. Think about the amounts of memes, tutorials, projects, and other digitally native creative forms that are powerful examples of the human combinatorial nature. Indeed, one of the key features of the online environment is the unprecedented number of elements available for creative action (and reaction) and their relative availability (Literat and Glaveanu 2018). Many online spaces and tools are dedicated to enhancing the combinatorial dynamic of creativity—fanfiction communities (Campbell et al. 2016; Curwood et al. 2013), specialized remix sites like CCMixter (Jarvenpaa and Lang 2011), and web tools like memegenerator.com are clear examples. As Literat and Glaveanu (2018) noticed, “even mainstream social media platforms like Twitter provide support for combinatorial and participatory ethos (Seneviratne and Monroy-Hernández 2010, p. 897). Other sources such as Instagram or Pinterest constitute online sources of inspiration to which we are exposed every day. Pinterest makes possible creating inspiring mood boards that can be helpful in sharing new ideas. This flourishing of ideas and projects enables easy interaction with successful ideas and projects that produces a form of positive stimulation from a motivational point of view. Interacting with successful projects can support the identification of new opportunities and also represents an inspiration for the generation of new ideas and visions facilitating the conceptual combination factor. People create by remixing ideas of others, working with tools made by others, and share their creative work with a wide and diversified audience.

76

5.4

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

New Forms of Collaboration in the Digital Space

This section highlights some of the main positive and negative influences identified by interconnecting the impacts of the digital era on the behavioural components of human beings and, in particular, the relational and social sphere (see p. 35) and the collected factors of creativity. Those influences address the factors included in all the components of creativity identified that are involved in a creative process (Table 5.3). Enabling co-creation at larger scale: new forms of collective exploration, generation, and evaluation In the digital transition, we are witnessing new social and creative behaviour. New ways of collective creation and collaboration in the online environment are emerging where sharing and participating represents a new way of operating and a new mindset. For example, within online creative communities, people are active participants who share ideas, knowledge, skills, spaces, and tools, contributing to form collective and open knowledge. Sharing technologies, such as online platforms or social media tools, have increased the possibilities of peer learning both in the form of direct and indirect collaboration through projects and tutorial. There is such a great amount of professional and amateur content online that anyone can learn anything just by searching video tutorials, instructables, and discussion forums: someone has already tried it, someone has already tested it, and someone has already explained it. People want to share their creative projects, and sharing inspires others and provides a route to collaborations and knowledge-transfer enhancing creativity, building creative confidence and creative problem solving skills. New creative projects are in turn shared to obtain feedback and out of a sense of personal satisfaction and achievement, inviting collaborators, development, and contributing to the community shared resource. The digital transition has catalysed the creation of a collaborative mindset in which the learning process is not an individual one, but rather a shared practice among the educational or working community. Literat (2012) suggests that in the online environment people can participate and be engaged on various levels: as an executory participant contributing to a specific task of a predesigned project or as a structural participant contributing to a conceptual design and exercising structural agency. Within online creative communities, each individual is strongly motivated to participate with her or his own ideas and projects, as well as to contribute to improving others’ project through instant comments and feedback. In this context emerges the concept of online distributed creativity considered as a form of collective creation (Sawyer and Dezutter 2009) in which roles and responsibilities are not clearly separated, and participants move seamlessly from creator to evaluator and vice versa, demonstrating the strong social link between creative and evaluative processes (Van Dijk 2014). Campbell (2016) made similar observations about fan-fiction communities, suggesting that the processes of “distributed mentorship” that characterise

5.4 New Forms of Collaboration in the Digital Space

77

Table 5.3 Summarises the impacts brought by the digital transition on the human behavioural components can positively and/or negatively influence creativity Impacts on human beings

Factors of creativity influenced

Negative influence

• Sharing ideas to others • Generating ideas with others • Emotional and technical support from others • Multidisciplinarity • Mentorship • Memory retrieval Diffusion of a • Analogical reasoning and collaborative association mindset and a • Conceptual combination sharing attitude • Creative visualization • Structured imagination • Reflection in action • Shifting perspective • Extrinsic motivation Support and • Analogical reasoning and improvement association of human • Conceptual combination performance • Structured imagination • Shifting imagination • Domain knowledge • Technical skills Live in two • Memory retrieval interconnected • Analogical reasoning and realities association • Conceptual combination • Creative visualisation • Structured imagination • Shifting perspective • Intrinsic motivation • Openness to experience The influence has been identified by relating the impacts to the factors Organisation in “creative” communities around shared projects and objectives

Positive influence Enabling co-creation at larger scale: new forms of collective exploration, generation, and evaluation

Providing opportunities and tools to access knowledge from distributed and open sources

Interacting with inspiring digital contents, ideas, and projects

of creativity

creative production in these spaces are unique to online communities. Specifically, the authors note that seven key attributes—i.e. aggregation, accretion, acceleration, abundance, availability, asynchronicity, and affect—distinguish these forms of feedback and evaluation from their traditional offline equivalents. Within this context, this can be considered also as a form of emotional support and encouragement from others necessary to boost the originality of ideas generated (Majar 2008 in Oldham and Da Silva 2015). Sharing and participating are becoming part of the mindset of this era and are creating a new online dimension in which the social factors that strengthen the cognitive creative processes are exponentially empowered and distributed across geographic boundaries and across multiple online communities with diverse backgrounds.

78

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

This enables asking for suggestions and encouragement, receiving instant feedback that can be immediately integrated into the creative process and so speeding it up. Within these online communities, people can get intrinsic pleasure from doing, creating, and being recognised by the members of the community, which generates self-esteem. Social acceptance and social recognition have been considered an important reward mechanism in this digital era that increases motivation. Feeling part of a larger community made up of people who share the same objective or similar interests increases the motivation of the people involved. Compensation doesn’t come in economic form but as a social reward in the form of community acknowledgement. Collaborating at large scale and from a distance in virtual environments One of the important impacts of the digital transition is the creation of an online virtual reality, in which human beings live, interact, create and communicate with other people—transcending temporal, conceptual, and geographical barriers (Fischer 2004). The dematerialization of the spaces where the creative activity happens represents one of the key points of the digital transition, as well as the increased need to work in teams and to collaborate. This has led to an increased development and diffusion of digital platforms that enable the possibility for a large number of people to brainstorm ideas, co-create solutions on projects also from distance. Creators can engage with each other and their audiences largely unrestrained by temporal or locative barriers, while the time required to retrieve information or communicate with collaborators is greatly reduced. According to the notion of Networked Flow (Gaggioli et al. 2013), ICTs could improve the development of collaborative zone of proximal development to expand group creativity. The potential is synergetic since it is larger than the simple sum of the individual capacities. In some cases and contexts, the abuse of this space for team collaboration and idea generation could reduce the number of spontaneous, unplanned, and face-to-face conversation or ‘‘casual collisions’’ (Sarbaugh-Thompson and Feldman 1998) that could serve to facilitate both the exchange of ideas and support for those ideas (Oldham and Da Silva 2015). New ideas are most likely to spring up through chance encounters in an environment and in impromptu meetings (Fisman 2013), not in remote, electronic interactions. Through their experiments of co-creation in a virtual environment, Uribe Larach and Cabra (2010) demonstrated the efficacy of a virtual environment room such as Second Life for problem solving with a team of people who were physically distant, but virtually co-localized by their avatars. The virtual settings improved: the feeling of working closely with others and the experience of a shared place, as opposed to just sharing any ordinary space, augment the immersiveness of the experience and improve creative interaction.

5.4 New Forms of Collaboration in the Digital Space

79

Adopting a virtual and digital identity The dematerialization of our identity is another key aspect of the digital transition that becomes relevant especially within the dynamics of social interaction. Virtual environment can also support the easy shifting of personalities by making possible taking on alternative roles, such as an avatar, and adopting new perspectives when generating ideas or thinking about a problem. For example, an avatar can fly from one side to another of the space, allowing for divergent thinking and generating ideas from a different perspective. The constant use of digital devices allows us to be present at the same time in a real and in a virtual world, moving from one to another continuously and blurring their distinction. Even when we are communicating with others through digital means, on a social network, for instance, we are adopting a virtual personality that constitutes our digital identity. Adopting a virtual personality or a digital identity can also decrease the risk to reputation that sometimes blocks the individual thinker from interacting with others to share and expose ideas to experts. This can help to overcome some emotional block that could occur in the creative process, such as the judgmental evaluation and criticism of the idea (Oldham and Baer 2012) and the consequent production blocking during a brainstorming session. The expectation of negative evaluation or the evaluative pressure causes individuals to self-censor the ideas they do produce and to generate fewer ideas (Diehl and Stroebe 1987; Yuan and Zhou 2008).

References Amabile, T.M.: A model of creativity and innovation in organizations. Res. Org. Behav. 123–167 (1988) Atkinson, P.: Do it yourself: democracy and design. J. Des. Hist. 19(1), 1–10 (2006) Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman, New York (1997) Bawden, D.: Origins and concepts of digital literacy. In: Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices, pp. 17–32 (2008) Burt, R.S.: Structural holes and good ideas. Am. J. Sociol. 110(2), 349–399 (2004) Campbell, J.A.: Thousands of positive reviews: distributed mentoring in online fan communities. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, pp. 691–704 (2016) Carrier, L.M., Rosen, L.D., Cheever, N.A., Lim, A.F.: Causes, effects, and practicalities of everyday multitasking. 35, 64–78 (2015) Corazza, G.E., Agnoli, S.: On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans. In: MCCSIS Conference 2015 Proceedings, Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (2015) Curwood, J.S., Magnifico, A.M., Lammers, J.C.: Writing in the wild: writers’ motivation in fanbased affinity spaces. J. Adolesc. Health. 56(8), 677–685 (2013) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row (1990) Dewett, T.: Understanding the relationship between information technology and creativity in organizations. Creat. Res. J. 15, 167–182 (2003)

80

5 Digitally Enhanced Humans: Positive …

Diehl, M., Stroebe, W.: Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: toward the solution of a riddle. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 53, 497–509 (1987) Fischer, G.: Social creativity: turning barriers into opportunities for collaborative design. In: PDC 2004—Proceedings of the Eight Participatory Design Conference 2004—Artful Integration: Interweaving Media, Materials and Practices, pp. 152–161 (2004) Fisman, R.: CEO right: Yahoo workers must show up (2013). Retrieved from http://www.cnn. com/2013/02/26/opinion/fisman-yahoo/index.html?hpt=hp_c2 (2013) Gaggioli A., Riva G., Mazzoni, E., Milani, L.,: Networked Flow:Towards an Understanding of Creative Networks. Springer Briefs in Education (2013) Gauntlett, D.: D5.2 Social impact of DiDIY. Deliverable WP5-Exploring the impact of DiDIY on creative society (February 2017). Retrieved from http://www.didiy.eu/public/deliverables/ didiy-d5.2.pdf (2017) Gilster, P., Glister, P.: Digital Literacy. Wiley Computer Pub (1997) Glăveanu, V.P.: How are we creative together? Comparing sociocognitive and sociocultural answers. Theory Psychol. 21(4), 473–492 (2011) Greene, S.L.: Characteristics of applications that support creativity. Commun. ACM 45(10), 100– 104 (2002) Houston, J.: Future skill demands, from a corporate consultant perspective. Presentation at the Workshop on Research Evidence Related to Future Skill Demands, National Research Council. Available: http://www.nationalacademies.org/cfe/Future_Skill_Demands_Presentations. html (2007) Huber, G.P.: A theory of the effects of advanced information technologies on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making. Acad. Manag. Rev. 15, 47–71 (1990) Ie, A., Haller, C.S., Langer, E.J., Courvoisier, D.S.: Mindful multitasking: the relationship between mindful flexibility and media multitasking. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28, 1526–1532 (2012) Jarvenpaa, S.L., Lang, K.R.: Boundary management in online communities: case studies of the Nine Inch Nails and ccMixter music remix sites. Long Range Plan. 44(5), 440–457 (2011) Jenkins, H., Bertozzi, V.: Artistic expression in the age of participatory culture. In: Tepper, S.J., Ivey, B. (eds.) Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life, pp. 171–195. Routledge, New York (2008) Johnson, S.: Everything Bad is Good For You. Penguin, New York (2006) Knapp, T.J.: A functional analysis of gambling behavior. In: Edington, W.R. (ed.) Gambling and Society, pp. 276–294. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL (1976) Lee, K.C.: Digital Creativity: Individuals, Groups, and Organizations. Springer (2013) Literat, I.: The work of art in the age of mediated participation: crowdsourced art and collective creativity. Int. J. Commun. 6, 2962–2984 (2012) Literat, I., Glaveanu, V.P.: Distributed creativity on the internet: a theoretical foundation for online creative participation. Int. J. Commun. (0), 893–908 (2018) Lubart, T.: How can computers be partners in the creative process: classification and commentary on the special issue. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 63(4–5), 365–369 (2005) Moos, D.C., Marroquin, E.: Multimedia, hypermedia, and hypertext: motivation considered and reconsidered. Comput. Hum. Behav. 26, 265–276 (2010) Oldham, G.R., Baer, M.: Creativity and the work context. In: Mumford, M. (ed.) Handbook of Organizational Creativity, pp. 387–420. Elsevier, San Diego, CA (2012) Oldham, G.R., Da Silva, N.: The impact of digital technology on the generation and implementation of creative ideas in the workplace. Comput. Hum. Behav. 42, 4–11 (2016) Pawlikowski, M., Brand, M.: Excessive Internet gaming and decision making: do excessive World of Warcraft players have problems in decision making under risky conditions? Psychiatry Res. 188, 428–433 (2011) Prabhu, V., Sutton, C., Sauser, W.: Creativity and certain personality traits: understanding the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation. Creat. Res. J. 20(1), 53–66 (2008) Robinson, K.: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Viking Adult, New York (2010)

References

81

Rosen, L.D., Lim, A.F., Carrier, L.M.: An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: educational implications and strategies too enhhance learning. Psicologia Educativa 17, 163–177 (2011) Sarbaugh-Thompson, M., Feldman, M.S.: Electronic mail and organizational communication: does saying ‘‘Hi’’ really matter? Org. Sci. 9, 685–698 (1998) Sawyer, R.K., Dezutter, S.: Distributed creativity: how collective creations emerge from collaboration. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts 3, 81–92 (2009) Seneviratne, O., Monroy-Hernández, A.: Remix culture on the Web: a survey of content reuse on different user-generated content websites. In: Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line. Raleigh, NC (2010) Shapiro A., Niederhauser D.: Learning from hypertext: research issues and findings. In: Jonassen, D.H. (ed.) Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 2nd ed., pp. 605–620. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ (2004) Shneiderman, B.: Creativity support tools: accelerating discovery and innovation. Commun. ACM 50(12), 20–32 (2007) Small, G., Vorgan, G.: IBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. HarperCollins e-book (2008) Tian M., Deng, P., Zhang, Y., Salmador, M.P.: How does culture influence innovation? A systematic literature review. Manage. Decis. (2018) Tierney, P.A., Farmer, S.M.: Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance. Acad. Manag. J. 45(6), 1137–1148 (2002) Uribe Larach, D., Cabra, J.F.: Creative problem solving in second life: an action research study. Creat. Inno. Manage. 19(2), 167–179 (2010) Van Dijk, Y.: Amateurs online: creativity in a community. Poetics 43, 86–101 (2014) Yuan, R., Zhou, J.: Differential effects of expected external evaluation on different parts of the creative idea production process and on final product creativity. Creat. Res. J. 20, 391–403 (2008) Zagalo, N., Branco, P.: Creativity in the Digital Age. Springer-Verlag, London (2015)

Chapter 6

Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity Through Digital Technologies

6.1

Introduction

The literature in Human Computer Interaction presents and offers many digital systems, tools, and environments specifically designed to enhance individual and collaborative creative processes. Traditional techniques for stimulating creativity have been replaced and enhanced by technology-driven tools, such as virtual rooms, decision cockpits, various communication tools and interactive dashboards (Hisrich and Soltanifar 2021). Companies and artists have already started to use and build their own digital interface to support their creative process, as well as to propose tools that can empower human potential. For example, the use of the IoT has now made it possible for ideas to be sourced from virtually anywhere, going beyond the natural human capabilities. This chapter discusses the various opportunities that digital technologies offer for supporting and augmenting the creative process and the factors of creativity. These opportunities have been identified through a second exploration of the Digital Creativity domain focused on the analysis of projects, research, and experiments that investigate and test the potential of some digital and interactive systems to enhance, empower and stimulate human creative abilities. This exploration has been guided by the following question: “In what ways can digital technology be adopted to empower the creative ability of human being?”. Starting from the classification proposed by Lubart (2005) in the special issue entitled “How can computer be partner in the creative process?”, this second exploration led to the identification of four main categories of interaction between a human and a digital technology aimed at augmenting creativity These are: • • • •

digital technology as a co-creator partner; digital technology as an inspirational and feeding partner; digital technology as a guide in the creative process; digital technology as a networker and a facilitator of communication in collaborative processes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_6

83

84

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

These four modes of interaction can both exist individually and be active simultaneously within the same digital tool or platform. It is important to clarify that digital tools are just a catalyst to initiate, stimulate, and augment human creative processes and cannot be an optimal solution in all situations. Indeed, each individual has her or his own set of cognitive abilities, working styles, personality traits, knowledge, and skills that interact to yield creative potential. Therefore, the needs of one individual may differ from those of another, and there is no average level of creative performance on which a digital system can be set because people lack certain traits or abilities within the large complete set. However, it is very useful and important to understand and clarify what could be the nature of the digital contribution and support the creative process in order to develop a specific system that can fit both the nature of the creative task and compensate for what the user lacks. The following sections describe in detail the four main categories identified.

6.2

Digital Tech as a Co-Creator Partner

Digital technology can play the role of a real active partner in the creative process, where human and computers work as a duo team supporting and inspiring each other in different steps of the process. Enabling technologies to become a co-creator partner to generate, evaluate, or refine ideas and bring them to culmination as full-fledged products is the most ambitious vision of human–computer interaction for creativity. This is possible today thanks to emerging cognitive technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which can autonomously learn and interpret information, combine concepts to generate a new idea, or contribute new ideas in a dialogue with humans. There are multiple ways in which a cognitive technology could become a co-creator partner. Firstly, they are able to speed up and amplify the earlier steps of the creative process where it is fundamental to gather and explore information, create meaningful clusters, and identify patterns among them. An excellent research study has been done by IBM in partnership with the design studio SOFTlab in which they created a sculpture representing a natural extension of Gaudi’s thinking by adopting Watson, the IBM cognitive system. The project, named Living Sculpture, used this technology to explore and identify trends in the materials, shapes, and colours that Gaudi used in his work to influence the development of a new sculpture (Lewis 2017a). Feeding hundreds of tagged images of Gaudi’s work, Barcelona city, and its culture into Watson’s Visual Recognition tool taught the system how to recognise patterns, trends, and the components of those images that ‘looked’ Gaudi-esque and those that didn’t. Similarly, Watson’s Alchemy Language tool analysed various

6.2 Digital Tech as a Co-Creator Partner

85

documents about Gaudi and his work, as well as Catalan culture, nature, and design to identify the most prevalent keywords and concepts. The sculpture designer by SOFTlab described how Watson’s cognitive tools helped them to carry out the tasks they normally do without computers in the early conceptual steps of the creative process such as “look at references and try to extract fundamental ideas that we then re-translate into a specific project” (Lewis 2017b). During the process, Watson discovered unusual details that helped shape the designer’s creative vision. Using these insights, SOFTlab determined the mediums and design elements that helped inform the sculpture’s framework and materiality. Another interesting application of Watson has been done by 20th Century Fox to explore the potential of ML and AI in the creation of a movie trailer for the new horror film “Morgan”. Using machine-learning techniques Watson was instructed first to identify, from 100 horror films, what can be considered as “scary”, analysing a scene’s visual, audio, and composition, and then applying it to the Morgan movie to create a trailer that would be considered “frightening and suspenseful” by a majority of viewers. Indeed, there are patterns and types of emotions in horror movies that resonate differently with each viewer, and the intricacies and interrelations of these are what an AI system would have to identify and understand in order to create a compelling movie trailer. This system shortens the process of making trailers from months to hours changing the human contribution that was devoted to critically and creatively analysed the work of the machine and combine its results in a valuable way. For example, some scenes selected by Watson did not follow the logical thread of the story, so they were not included in the final trailer. “Computers can probably better implement random searches than humans, but humans are needed to select the best ideas and perhaps to fine hone these ideas, turning them into viable creative productions” (Lubart 2005, p. 368). These two examples show perfectly how the cognitive system could become knowledgeable on a specific topic and so become a valuable expert partner in the creative process. By reproducing the learning and synthesis processes of a human being, it amplifies and extend the human cognitive potential providing meaning and insight out of a vast mass of unstructured data and information (i.e., specific information about materials, forms, and design elements to be transferred in the final product) which would have taken a great deal more time to be done by humans. This computational technology could support people in the earlier stages of the creative process, expanding the initial information, speeding up the analysis of large amounts of information, identifying and making associations through information from multiple contexts of exploration, and quickly identifying both expected and unexpected findings. The system become a co-designer which is responsible for the process activities that the machine can perform in a quicker, richer, and more amplified way. It supports human beings in getting rid of some cognitive activities, enable them to devote more time to the critical analysis of the results provided by the machine and to the conception and combination of these results to generate new ideas.

86

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

AI can encourage human creativity in freeing up time for humans to focus on innovation and actively augmenting human decision-making by adding a layer of machine-driven data analysis to guide our creative choices (Bianzino 2020). The second way in which cognitive digital technologies can become human co-creators is by supporting and augmenting the later steps of the creative process where it is fundamental to combine information to produce ideas and solutions, making them visual and tangible. In 2017, a company in Ferrero together with the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather launched the “Nutella Unica” project. They created an algorithm that generated seven million unique versions of labels for Nutella jars. The algorithm, able to assemble various patterns and colours pulled from a database, made possible developing a number of different graphic identities that are outside any human possibilities, substituting the work of professional visual designers in the design and creation of each unique illustration. It is well-known that AI has already been used to generate artistic content such as music, painting, and fashion (Magalhães 2019), as well as complex engineering infrastructures such as bridges or bike frames that employ as little material as possible to become lighter. The combination of machine intelligence and human expertise is a powerful one because it allows to achieve results not possible for humans alone. However, the adoption of these kinds of technology to augment the creative process is profoundly reshaping the fundamental role of designers and the competences they need. Designer should learn to understand how to use the opportunities provided by that digital technology to obtain something unique and special and, ideally, to design the creative process of the machine that enabled generation, for example, of millions of unique packaging designs for Nutella. Designers have to design the metadesign (Xie et al. 2018), which refers to the process of understanding the problem, and to generate a new machine that can become a co-creator in the creative process when dealing with complex systems with which they can interact and give feedback simultaneously. The use of such technologies requires a strong understanding of the technology system and its potential, as well as of the mechanisms and steps of the creative process. Understanding and knowing the creative process allows humans to understand how to best relate to these technologies and how to use them to support the creative process, for example, ‘to lighten the cognitive overload and redirect it for activities that are innate to human beings and that are currently not replaceable by the machine. The Japanese artist Nao Tokui adopted AI to be creatively inspired during his DJ performances. This is the third way for technology to be a co-creator partner. AI DJ Project1 is a live music performance where an AI DJ plays alongside a human DJ creating a duo that work together to inspire each other in a cycle where both users and the digital system can propose ideas, even randomly, to inspire

1

http://naotokui.net/projects/ai-dj-project-2016/.

6.2 Digital Tech as a Co-Creator Partner

87

unconventional ideas. The AI system selects and mixes songs and performs other musical tasks, as well as the human DJ. During the performance, each DJ selects one song at a time, embodying a dialogue between the human and AI through music. Indeed, the system listens to songs played by the human, detects the tempo, judges the genre, and processes information on the spot. Following this process, the AI system which has its own intelligence, chooses the next record to be played, sometimes performs in unexpected ways bringing an unpredictability and amusing tension to the human performance, which is continuously inspired by the random choices of the machine. The system represents an “Alternative Intelligence” with a logic different from humans and is designed to represent an inspirational partner for the human being that is able to think and play alongside its human counterpart supporting his or her performance and allow him or her to produce new and original results that would have been totally different without its use. Digital technology adopted as a co-creator makes us reflect on how we can further conceive the relationship between human and machine, both in the generation of new content and in the collaboration within the process of information exploration and idea generation.

6.3

Digital Tech as Inspirational and Feeding Partner

As we learn from the collected factors of creativity, the creative process involves a large number of cognitive processes that support the production of creative ideas, such as analogic and metaphorical thinking, conceptual combination, lateral thinking, creative visualization, and structured imagination. Those processes can be trained and improved, but an individual may not even be aware that certain kinds of thinking may be useful in some creative activities. Because it is also possible that one individual couldn’t master all of them, digital technologies can be used as “an expert system, knowledgeable in creativity-relevant techniques that can help the user to go as far as possible” (Lubart 2005, p. 367). Digital technology can be considered as a divergent modifier that can be designed to inspire people and support them in divergent thinking. By replicating human cognitive processes, they can speed up and enrich human thinking while augmenting work and learning processes. The information and stimulus provided by this system in different ways can be used as a jump-start at some point in the creative process. Several digital tools have been developed building on this idea. A relevant example is NeuroCreate,2 a system based on neuroscience studies, composed of an AI-powered platform that provides a suite of digital tools that support humans in the

2

https://www.neurocreate.co.uk/.

88

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

creative exploration of a topic, enabling them to be more efficient in their ability to solve problems, define strategies, and generate ideas. The platform includes creative techniques such as The Six-Thinking Hats by De Bono (2017) and tools for creating mind maps and information clustering, as well as the possibility to browse images, connect images and words, and apply filters to guide the process. It is a personalised and interactive system where a user can insert a word as an input in the specific panel, and automatically the system provides suggestions based on analogy and metaphor. The AI innovative technology can activate brain patterns associated with a ‘flow’ mental state (Csikszentmihalyi 1996), which is an enhanced mental state where each individual feels capable of overcoming challenges effortlessly. Flow can enable humans to focus on the details and simultaneously be aware of the bigger picture, improving well-being, creative productivity, and mental flexibility, leading to a better experience. These type of tools and technologies can be considered as brain prosthesis that support people in the exploration and generation of ideas by extremely speeding up and expanding their cognitive processes to reach peak performances of the creative process. Indeed, they can support people in finding inspiration, organizing the information in a visual way to enable them to easily and quickly identify patterns and connections between them. The system can also support finding inspiration in the most unexpected ways, generating wild ideas and evaluating them, solving and strategising the toughest of challenges to yield novel solutions. It can be considered as a guide for the cognitive creative flow within the creative process. A deep knowledge of the cognitive mechanism behind the creative process makes it possible to design digital tools that can exploit the combinatorial nature of creativity. Combinatorial technology can trigger unpredictable inferences by enabling recombinations of various keywords relevant to the challenge at hand, nurturing lateral thinking and imagination. An example is Design Human Design,3 a web-based tool developed by MIT researchers specifically designed to support the early phases of the creative process. It enables recombining variables related to a project research into a creative prompt sentence creating stories for possible design alternatives, allowing for ambiguity and encouraging multiple interpretations. By combining words randomly, the tool can provide the user with new vision, inspiration, and ideas. While the previous examples seek to boost flow and unpredictability in a variety of domains, some digital tools are specifically designed to support inspiration and ideation in the specific design and engineering problem-solving process. An interest example is Idea Inspire, a web-based design tool developed to reproduce and foster analogic thinking from the natural realm, supporting biomimetic and biologically inspired design. Through the tool, it is possible to retrieve descriptions of over 1,200 natural and artificial systems from a specifically designed database created by experts from the biological domain. The tool acts as stimuli and

3

https://reframe.media.mit.edu/.

6.3 Digital Tech as Inspirational and Feeding Partner

89

inspiration for the generation and synthesis of novel ideas for a given design problem to provide an adequate understanding of the complex system itself. The tool dramatically boosts the human ability to think through analogy and searching for analogies through experts by embedding the analogic cognitive skills of the human being, as well as specific knowledge in a domain. Indeed, it speeds up the identification of significant analogies providing information and inspirations with respect to the specific needs of the project, facilitating results that alone would take much more time to achieve. Digital technologies can also be used to modify the environment and the space in which the creative activity takes place to generate digitally created artificial worlds. Indeed, the surrounding environment is considered an important element that can inspire the creator. Some digital technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), can provide immersive realities to generate imaginary, symbolic, or a simulation of the real world by altering the surrounding space and objects (Fuchs and Moreau 2006). They can create contexts that enables one or more people to experience a sensor-motor and cognitive activity that can augment the creative and emotional potential of those involved in the experience and the creative process. An interesting experiment in this direction was conducted to explore how the adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) techniques applied to a designer output can impact and augment the early creative phases, and thus to propose new methods and tools that stimulate and expand the creative design process (Rieuf et al. 2016). The experimentation was conducted using moodboard visualisation. The researchers proposed to spatialise the moodboard data in an immersive 3D environment, adding a third dimension in respect to the initial composition. The study demonstrated the test and the result on the designer’s decision making, comparing the effect of both a traditional and an immersive moodboard of the same composition. While results highlighted that there were no differences in the semantic perception of the content, the meanings communicated by a traditional moodboard and its immersive homologue are fairly similar. However, the immersive moodboard gave access to higher emotional impact that improved decision making related to the next steps to tackle in the process. It helped to better understand the problems’ context and the prediction of the future product’s nature. In the same way, this technology can be used to create environments that can be reproduced to support other externalization and communication of other intermediate results empowering self-reflection and decision-making abilities in multiple steps of the creative process. Virtual-reality technology provides the illusion of a potential reality, augmenting the communication canal between the person and the representation supporting self-reflection through a better dialog and interaction with it. lassiImmersion is a lever towards an attractive, engaging, and efficient creative process that creates an impactful and vivid experience, activating the link between consciousness, body, reality and ambiance.

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

90

6.4

Digital Tech as a Guide

In some cases, digital technology could be programmed to guide the activity within the process and to simplify some aspect of the activity itself. These tools can be considered as guidance to support humans in going through a task, finishing it, and ensuring its correctness. Indeed, there are many routes and many ways to achieve a goal, and the guidance can provide many feedbacks to support humans in self-reflection and in understanding which is the best route to pursue. The guidance can happen in many forms and for different purposes. In some instances, the guidance can be visual to show users the path for solving an activity or part of the process. The BallonFAB project (Xie et al. 2019) adopted projection mapping and Augmented Reality as a visual guidance to support users in building a large-scale balloon art installation. Following this guidance, all the separate parts composing the installation and fabricated by the user can be assembled to create the whole shape, without requiring any previous knowledge of the installation itself. The interactive system guides any user in building an art installation without any technical skill, increasing the users’ confidence in their creative ability. This type of digital interactive systems provides real-time feedback that supports the reflection in action of the user that can instantaneously change the strategy for the construction. This kind of guidance is useful to accelerate decision making and test different ideas and solutions quickly in any convergent phase of the creative process. It also supports making and visualising progress in the creative work, creating a playful environment that augments motivation. Moreover, technologies such as AR can bridge the real and the virtual worlds to provide immersive and interactive experiences that, together with a game-based mechanism, enhance creative play and a playful approach while guiding the exploration. AR can create an immersive experience that drives motivation and engagement and at the same time inspires and enhances some factors, such as positive affect and imagination, as well as real-world interaction, discovery, and exploration. A similar example in the artistic domain has been provided by Fels et al. (1998) that developed a visual system to support musicians during jazz improvisation by providing novel musical phrases in a real-time manner. Real-time feedbacks, as well as the possibility to keep track of the process steps and achievement, are also important characteristics to keep in mind when designing systems to guide people, especially novices, in the creative process. These characteristics are well integrated within Shape,4 a visual and collaborative platform for building, testing, and refining ideas. Shape makes it possible to guide, document, and manage the creative process of a team of people which is solving a challenge, in a transparent way, guiding and supporting collaboration and simplifying communication.

4

https://www.shape.space/.

6.4 Digital Tech as a Guide

91

The web-based tool allows to engage and guide multidisciplinary team through the steps of the creative design process for innovation, while providing also a template to give people quick rapid realisation of their ideas. It allows to gather inspiration and ideas creating visual spaces to brainstorm a new idea or share design inspiration across a team to easily request feedback directly within the platform. The visual support facilitates evidence-based decisions and makes possible to keep track of the best practise analysed and the idea shared, allowing people in going back and iterating and self-reflecting on the material collected, the decision taken in each step, and the progress done. The visual system guides people who don’t have design and communication skills to visually explain their ideas and thoughts. Indeed, digital technology can be designed to guide the user through the process activities with facilitated interfaces. Many tools indeed provide simplified interfaces that hide a huge amount of knowledge and skills, democratizing processes and activities. A powerful example in this direction is the interactive 3D glider design modeller, which is a CAD tool based on an assembly-based modeling technique that builds on an aerodynamics framework to allow anyone to design a glider with an aerodynamic shape able to fly. After completing the glider design, the real-time simulation results are presented, and, if not satisfied, the user can change the velocity performance leading to an automatic change in the shape of the glider. Through the interactive real-time feedback, the system guides users in testing possibilities quickly, improving their decision-making abilities while creating a glider. The tool incorporates the essential complex knowledge needed to design a glider. Most of the time when something very difficult has to be designed, there is a need to connect multiple specialized knowledge sets and skills that remain hidden behind different layers of the final product. This tool makes it possible to simplify, speed up, and democratise the design of a glider, which usually takes a much longer time and requires deep knowledge of physics and aerodynamics. Everyone can now design an aerodynamic glider without any of those competences and any technical skill in 3D modeling.

6.5

Digital Tech as a Networker and Facilitator of Collaborative Processes

Digital technology represents an opportunity for the social creative process that depends on interaction with other people. The empowerment of individual creative potential involves communicating and sharing one’s ideas with an audience that can evaluate, interpret, and provide suggestions to improve the idea. Today, individual creators indeed can find greater support from a wide audience in the various stages of the creative process, spanning the collection of information, idea generation, and idea evaluation. This can happen in different forms and in different organizations,

92

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

both as an individual who aims to reach a broadest group as possible or as an individual within a community. They both adopted the same idea of technology as a networker but with two different purposes and objectives. The first used crowdsourcing as a form of collective evaluation within the creative process to receive as much feedback as possible from users around the world. An example of crowdsourcing used for this purpose was “The Selfie Guidance System” project (Fang et al. 2018) whose aim was to design and develop an interactive selfie application to improve user satisfaction when taking selfies. In this study, crowdsourcing platform such as CrowdFlower5 was utilized to evaluate, with a huge number of people, the score space of possible head postures based on hundreds of virtual selfies. Based on the crowdsourcing results, the developers generated a real-time user interface able to extract the facial features from each frame and estimate the head postures of the users in the real world. The crowdsourcing method made it possible to receive broader support and an increased number of feedbacks in a very short time from multiple parts of the world. Based on this evaluation, the developers design the final selfie guidance system. Crowdsourcing with a generative purpose has been used in “The Jhonny Cash Project”,6 a hand-drawn, animated music video with each frame drawn by a different person. People from all over the world were invited to create a drawing meant to be woven into a collective music-video-tribute to Johnny Cash that is continuously evolving and growing as more people participate. As an individual within a community, digital technology can be used to facilitate the collective generation of ideas and knowledge, to exploit the creative potential of people, or to collect inspiring contributions for your projects. Digital technologies make it possible to connect human minds to each other in new ways and on an unprecedented scale. As Malone (2018) argued with his “Superminds” theory, today computers can help create more intelligent superminds simply by connecting humans to one another in a variety of productive, new ways. Social media platforms, such as Slack, usually dedicated to facilitating communication among teams of people working together, are now used to connect people creating a community of practice as a safe, low-barrier-to-entry space for people around a specific topic. Practical Service Design community7 is one of them: With over 6,000 people from all over the world interested and expert in service design, it aims to educate, motivate, and integrate service design into a practical work context. The community can be considered as a facilitator of knowledge in which people with diverse backgrounds can meet and share ideas, information, and knowledge concerning service design practice.

5

https://visit.figure-eight.com/People-Powered-Data-Enrichment_T. http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/. 7 http://www.practicalservicedesign.com/. 6

6.5 Digital Tech as a Networker and Facilitator of Collaborative Processes

93

The community represents a repository of knowledge and a group of peers and experts who can support the creative process in numerous ways and for different purposes. People can start discussions and collect multiple different perspectives on the same issue that can open new paths to the research. The community can also be used to collect feedback on the ideas/project generated and to receive mentorship and emotional support when one mind is stuck on the same idea or issue. The support from others can increase social presence and therefore motivation. Another example that encompasses the whole creative process is Open IDEO,8 an open innovation platform that leverages an online community to create solutions for social issues supporting the connection of people from all over the world to build on each other’s skills and ideas for good. Different type of institution (companies, ONG, etc.) are launching a challenge on the platform related to a social problem or issue and, in a specific amount of time, people are guided through the several steps of the creative process to solve it. Each individual or team that participates in a challenge can work in an offline setting and benefit from the connection with the worldwide online community to share, improve, and shape their processes and their ideas. The opportunity of receiving mentoring and support from others amplifies the reflection process and contributes to enriching the idea. Moreover, this can enhance sharing the intermediate steps of each work, supporting people in taking inspiration from other ideas, or learning domain knowledge related to the challenge that had not previously been taken in consideration. It allows also to keep track of the work done and see progress. Being recognised by a community, as well as winning the competition, are powerful extrinsic motivators. Many co-creation platforms enable regular people to cooperatively explore, generate, and evaluate solutions, so permitting a powerful new kind of distributed creative collaborative process. Digital technologies can also provide new digital spaces for communication, collaboration, and co-creation between small teams working together at a distance. Having access to intellectual capacity from people residing in all corners of the globe is an incredibly powerful resource. Therefore, some digital tools have been specifically created to facilitate the generation of ideas among other people located in different places. Idea Expander is a digital tool that allows a new way of brainstorming at a distance through an electronic system. The idea behind the tool is to stimulate the generation of a large number of ideas by using pictures as visual stimuli that are automatically generated from the team’s conversational content. As a result, a group can have brainstorming conversations through a chat, a language processor automatically detects keywords and generates real-time inspirations in the form of images with similar, analogic, or metaphoric concepts, that support each one participant in generating a new idea to share.

8

https://www.openideo.com/.

94

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

The system stimulates and enhances the cognitive process of retrieving information from memory, in this case associative memory, as well as analogic and associative thinking, structured imagination, and lateral thinking. The chat system support people in: giving more attention to what others have said; facilitating building on one another’s ideas; interacting with multiple people at the same time located in different geographic space; easily keeping track of all the ideas that emerged; hiding their personalities; being freer to express their ideas without the fear of being judged; and overcoming the difficulties of shy people to take their turn to speak. This means that the system increases individuals’ idea production. The quantity of ideas generated may also breed the quality, originality, and wildness of ideas. Research from Prof. Yuizono et al. (1998) demonstrates that brainstorming with a large number of people produces a larger number of ideas and consequently the diversity of ideas. He found that more ideas are generated, more opportunities to develop good ideas emerge, and the convergent thinking steps improve (i.e. there is not much difference between the results obtained between 30 and 50 ideas; but there are significant differences when generating 500 and 200 ideas). When dealing with this huge numbers of ideas, it is important to provide proper visualisation support to enable visualisation of all the ideas collected, to handle the task by forming clusters, and to analyse them. Some digital tools have been developed by adopting a different type of technology to ensure the perception of a physical presence by team members. They indeed provide new virtual immersive worlds where people can actually meet. Think Space is a Virtual Reality software that enables brainstorming in various types of extreme and unconventional environments, such as the desert or a remote island. A creative team can remotely participate in the brainstorming through an avatar, without being physically in the same location. This space has been designed with the intention of providing a playful environment where scenes can be selected and changed among the provided ones. This can motivate people and also support the generation of ideas free from fears of being judged. Moreover, in accordance with creative cognition theories, a shift in context, isolated from everyday routine, might lead to new creative insights, releasing participants from fixated retrieval processes. The value of communication is even more important in collaborative processes solving complex problems that involve a group of diverse individuals from a mix of backgrounds. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is a research project (Arias et al. 2015) that explores the potentialities of building an interactive immersive environment to foster social creativity and support reflective communities to solve shared problems. Each member can interact with computationally enhanced physical objects on an electronic whiteboard, and then use them to represent the situation they are currently exploring and discussing. The computer-generated information derived from the interaction with the objects is projected back onto the tabletop construction area, creating an augmented reality environment. The participants work in the same room

6.5 Digital Tech as a Networker and Facilitator of Collaborative Processes

95

around this electronic table, interacting with digital augmented objects to facilitate the exchange of ideas. Interactive systems can augment the physical space where the creative activity happens, supporting the sharing and generation of ideas, enhancing therefore the creativity of heterogeneous teams, allowing to easily identify a shared language. Evolving computer representations have been found to facilitate the exchange of ideas between diverse actors working on complex problems, supporting the creation of a visual shared representation of the topic discussed. The system can support problem exploration, scenario building, and ideas generation and visualisation. Human communication is fundamental among a team that is engaged in new product development. In order to support human creativity, it is also important to support not only logical aspects, but also human motivations, human emotions, social interactions, and some spontaneous moments. Probably, this is one of the most negative aspects of using technology that has still not been solved through communication systems, especially among people who don’t know each other. If partners don’t have good relationships and trust, it is difficult to make the collaboration work efficiently. Many research studies on affective computing are currently investigating the role of computer technology in understanding human emotions, such as happiness or anger. A strong contribution in these directions comes from MIT Professor Rosaline Pickard who has pursued research in social-psychology decisions that are strongly related to human emotion.9 In some contexts and situations, such as the work environment, it is more important to focus on the relationships and their emotional components before considering technology.

References Arias, E.G., Eden, H., Fischer, G.: The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC): Explorations in Human-Centered Informatics (John M. Carroll, Ed.). Penn State University, Morgan & Claypool Pulisher (2015) Bianzino, N.: Is AI the start of the truly creative human? (2020). Retrieved from https://www.ey. com/en_eg/ai/isai-the-start-of-the-truly-creative-human Csikszentmihalyi, M.: The creative personality. Psychol. Today 29(4), 36–40 (1996) De Bono, E.: Six Thinking Hats. Penguin, UK (2017) Fang, N., Xie, H., Igarashi, T.: Selfie Guidance System in Good Head Postures. In: Joint Proceedings of the ACM IUI 2018 Workshops. SymCollab, pp. 1–8 (2018) Fels, S., Nishimoto, K., Mase, K.: Musikalscope: a graphical musical instrument. IEEE Multimedia 5(3), 26–35 (1998) Fuchs, P., Moreau, G.: Traité de la réalité virtuelle (2006) Hisrich, R.D., Soltanifar, M.: Unleashing the creativity of entrepreneurs with digital technologies. In: Digital Entrepreneurship, pp. 23–49. Springer, Cham (2021) Lewis, K.: The first thinking sculpture: inspired by Gaudi, created with Watson. IBM Internet of Things. 28 February (2017a). Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/ first-thinking-sculpture/

9

https://www.affectiva.com/product/emotion-as-a-service/.

96

6 Digitally Enhanced Creativity: Augmenting Creativity …

Lewis, K.: Using creativity to frame new technologies in a positive way. IBM Internet of Things. 1 March (2017b). Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/creativitywatson/230 Lubart, T.: How can computers be partners in the creative process: classification and commentary on the special issue. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 63(4–5), 365–369 (2005) Magalhães, R.: Come together: using AI to enhance creativity (2019). Retrieved from https:// unbabel.com/blog/artificial-intelligence-creativity/ Malone, T.W.: Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together. Little, Brown (2018) Rieuf, V., Bouchard, C., Aoussat, A.: Immersive moodboards, a comparative study of industrial design inspiration material. J. Design Res. 13(1), 78–106 (2016) Xie, H., Igarashi, T., Miyata, K.: Precomputed panel solver for aerodynamics simulation. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 37(2), 1–12 (2018) Xie H., Peng, Y., Chen, N., Xie, D., Chang, C.M., Miyata, K.: BalloonFAB: Digital Fabrication of Large-Scale Balloon Art, ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Late Breaking Work, Glasgow (2019) Yuizono, T., Munemori, J., Nagasawa, Y.: GUNGEN: groupware for a new idea generation consistent support system. In: Proceedings. 3rd Asia Pacific Computer Human Interaction (Cat. No. 98EX110), pp. 357–362 (1998)

Part III

Design Contribution: Tools to Observe and Empower Creativity in the Digital Age

Chapter 7

Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model to Observe Digital Creativity

7.1

Introduction

The first part of the book shed light on the co-evolution between digital technology and human beings, highlighting the emerging impacts brought by the digital transition on the multiple human components—cognitive, conative, affective, and behavioural. A deep investigation of the literature in creativity demonstrates that these components play a fundamental role when an individual engages in a creative activity. Indeed, the creative process is strongly influenced by the cognitive, personality, motivational, social, and emotional factors related to these components that are responsible for an individual’s creative potential throughout the process. The second part of the book is dedicated to exploring the new shapes of creativity in the digital era and how it is influenced by the ongoing social and technological evolution. A structured journey leads us through the exploration and understanding of Digital Creativity, a growing and evolving discipline, to identify which among the collected human factors of creativity are most influenced by the digital transition, how they evolve, and how digital technologies can support and enhance them. Indeed, the exploration has brought out new and evolving factors of creativity that are becoming increasingly important to develop and empower in order to cope with the complexities of this century. From this analysis, it is clearly apparent that also the factors of creativity are co-evolving with digital technology. Analysing current transformations to understand the new facet of creativity in the digital age, the new skill and knowledge to develop, and the new digital opportunities for empowering creativity, is a fundamental step for design research that also expands the understanding of creativity in design. Design should play the role of a guide by enabling and empowering people’s creative and design skills and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_7

99

100

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

mindsets, educating them to face the complex digital transformations of our century. The third part of the book is devoted to reflecting on the contribution that design research can provide to transform people by empowering their creative abilities to enable them to navigate in uncertain times. As we mentioned at the beginning of the book, creativity has been recognized as an important human ability necessary for our survival that will shape the society of the future and that will allow people to guide the technological evolution. This chapter illustrates the definition of the Creativity 4.0 Model—built by interconnecting all the previous analytical results—whose structure explains the complex and multidimensional nature of creativity in the digital transition from a human-centred approach. The new model systematizes the knowledge on creativity in the digital era, highlighting in a comprehensive way the relationships between the human factors of creativity, the creative process, and the digital transition. It makes it possible to effectively explore and understand how the digital transition is positively or negatively influencing or transforming the ingredients that contribute to making a person more creative and their effect on the creative process. Digital technologies continue to develop, evolve, and grow. Therefore, the model also become a fundamental design tool with the main aim of guiding a continuous observation of the digital influences on multiple levels of human creativity.

7.2

Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements

The Digital Creativity domain has been investigated and explored by adopting a human-centred design perspective that interconnects three different facets of creativity, first, the Creator—referring to the cognitive, personality, motivational and emotional characteristics of the digitally enhanced human—second, Creating— referring to the steps of the creative process—and Context—referring to the contextual aspects that could influence creators and the creative process (see Chap. 4). The exploration of the domain through this perspective enables collecting a large amount of information and knowledge which needs to be organized and structured. Therefore, an exploratory model has been built to provide a tool that could show the multiple complex aspects to consider when dealing with creativity. The first element considered for the construction of the model is the Digital Transition (Context) since this phenomenon is deeply and profoundly impacting and transforming different components of human beings influencing the human creative potential. This element represents the substrate on which the whole research feeds, in continuous movement and evolution, so, therefore, it acts as the foundation of the model.

7.2 Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements

101

The Human Being (Creator) is the second element of the model, which here has been represented as divided into three primary levels. The three-level subdivision arisses from the evidence that the digital transition is radically impacting the human condition, reshaping the way in which people think and learn, their motivation and emotions, and the way they behave, work, and socialize. Each level refers to the corresponding human components relevant for performing a creative activity and that are most influenced by the digital transition (Table 7.1). These are: • The cognitive level intended as the part of mental functions that deals with logic that involve mental actions or processes of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thoughts. It includes the cognitive component and therefore many aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: attention; the generation of new knowledge, memory, and the use of existing knowledge; judgment and evaluation; reasoning and decision making (Buchanan and Hyde 2008, cited by Huitt 2012). • The individual level that includes the behavioural and affective components of human beings involved in the ability to carry out actions. This level includes “forms of bodily activity, things and their use, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz 2002: 249). It also includes the emotional part of human beings related to feelings, emotions, attitudes, and predispositions. This involves understanding one’s emotions, managing emotions, increasing self-efficacy, persevering, and so on. • The social level that includes part of the component that define how human beings relates to others and the communication and collaboration with other individuals. On this level, human beings are taken into account as part of a group, and the relationships that exist among the members of this group. Although the human being is, by definition, an individual being, he is also essentially a social being because he has a predisposition to relate to other human beings, to generate affective bonds, and even to organize in groups. These levels obviously represent different aspects of a same unit, the human being, that interacts and influence each other, so they should not be considered as separate blocks but as intersecting each other because relationships among them exist. Their separation here in the model aims to provide a multiple way of reading and studying human evolution, considering both a single level and multiple interactions between them. Within the model, the human-being element overlaps with the digital transition to emphasize the concept of total influence, as visualized in Fig. 7.1. The last fundamental element of the model is the Creative Process (Creating) as part of the creative ability, which has been recognized as one of the most important skills in the twenty-first century (The Partnership for 21st Century Skill 2008), as well as one of the distinctive human capabilities that can be trained and improved.

Creativity relevant processes Domain relevant skills

Cognitive control

Cognitive factors (specific abilities, knowledge)

Multivariate approach (Lubart et al. 2003)

Conative Conative-affective factors component (specific personality traits, motivation, emotion) Affective Intrinsic task component motivation Behavioural Social environment Environment (physical, social) system Spiritual component The table compares them with the componential theories analysed

Componential model of creaticity (Amabile 1983, 1996)

Human dimensions (Huitt 2012)

Social level (social environment)

Motivation Environment (physical, social)

Cognitive level (creativity relevant processes, knowledge and skills)

Creativity 4.0

Individual level (motivation and attitude, emotion)

Generative componential processes Exploratory componential processes

Geneplore model (Finke et al. 1992)

Personality attributes

Intellectual abilities Thinking style knowledge

Investment theory of creativity (Sternberg and Lubart 1995)

Table 7.1 Summary of the components necessary for creativity included in the Creativity 4.0 model and their subdivision by the three-dimensions of levels of human beings

102 7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

7.2 Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements

103

Fig. 7.1 Representation of the first and second component of the Creativity 4.0 model: the digital transition and the human being

As already stated, the creative process is strongly influenced by the human factors of creativity related to the human components that regulate the individual level of creative potential within the process. Therefore, the creative process is transversal to all the three levels of human beings since, as emerges from the literature, it is profoundly influenced by all of them. By focusing on the human-centric nature of the phenomenon, the three-level subdivision makes it possible to consider the multiple facets of human beings involved in a creative activity and, at the same time, to take into account the complexity and multidimensionality of the creative process in the digital transition. In this way, the built Creativity 4.0 model (Fig. 7.2) enables including the many factors of creativity that intervene within the human being on the three different levels, including: • Creativity as a mental process that generates an outcome through multiple mental states (Corazza and Agnoli 2015; Sawyer 2012) from the problem definition to the evaluation and implementation, supported by specific cognitive processes (Finke et al. 1992; Ward 2001), expertise, and technical skills; • Creativity as an individual practice requiring activity, things and tools, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge as well as a creative attitude (Amabile 2012; Dubberly 2004);

104

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

Fig. 7.2 Representation of the Creativity 4.0 model. The creative process is the third element of the model

• Creativity as a social process involving others (Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Fischer 2004; Literat and Glăveanu 2016). This process results from the interaction between people of different levels of skills and background, sharing resources and collaborating on projects, and encouraging a sense of creative agency and participation in the world (Glăveanu 2011). The intersection of those three levels provides a comprehensive understanding of the complexity and multifarious aspects of the creative process composed of several steps and activities, as well as the motivational, cognitive, attitudinal, technical, and social factors influencing the creative process. The definition of the model makes it possible to demonstrate that the digital transition is having an impact on human beings at multiple levels, highlighting an ongoing generational change driven by a co-evolution between human and digital technologies. In this co-evolution, creativity becomes a fundamental human skill that can be developed and trained through a deep understanding and practice of the creative process, as well as through the development of technical skills, attitudes, and stimulating social and environmental factors. The model facilitates the integration and interpretation of the factors of creativity, i.e., the blocks and the impacts that can enable or inhibit creativity on the three levels.

7.2 Creativity 4.0 Model. Describing the Model and Its Elements

105

This section presents an overview of the three main elements composing the model in order to help readers to progress smoothly through it and better understand the overall structure. The following section focuses on how the model can support the organization of the factors of creativity resulting from the exploration.

7.3

Multiple Levels of Creativity in the Digital Age

To summarize, the Creativity 4.0 Model is composed of three main elements: the digital transition that is the ground on which the model is growing and feeding; the human element which is analysed according to the three levels on which the digital transition has impacts (cognitive, individual, social) and that intervenes in a creative activity, and finally, the creative process as a human ability and therefore transversal to all the levels of human beings. The Creativity 4.0 model enables relocating on each of these levels the factors of creativity based on their relationship to the level itself. The factors of creativity identified as presented in Chap. 4 were organized within five main components that emerge from the analysis and comparison of the componential theories of creativity (Table 7.1), are now rearranged according to the three levels of the human being so defined. All the creative factors are important, but not all the factors have been relocated. As the exploration of Digital Creativity has proceeded, it has become clear that some factors were not influenced by digital technology, while others can also be augmented and empowered using digital tools. The analysis also revealed new factors, mostly new skills that people need to develop in order to cope with technological complexity and to manage the threats and opportunities it presents. For example, the capacity of dealing with ambiguity, which is a human attitudinal factor fundamental for the originality of a project, has been discarded since there is no evidence revealed about its evolution or relevance in the digital transition. Also, within the environment component, only the factors related to the social relationship have been considered within the model. Digital literacy emerged as a fundamental new factor that enables people to understand the potentialities of digital technologies in terms of social and cultural opportunities. The model structure allocates greater importance to the human being—which is continuously evolving—and to the idea that creativity depends on complex interactions and dynamics related to multiple human levels. The model highlights the idea that, as human beings evolve due to the technological evolution, their creative abilities evolve accordingly, and humans will need new stimuli, new dynamics, and new inputs to activate and enhance their creative potentials, which depend heavily not only the person but also on the surrounding environment.

106

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

In the following subsections, the dimensions of creativity that are explored through the model are briefly clarified, showing the factors of creativity on each one of the three defined dimensions. The model is not static. There are continuous influences between the levels presented, meaning that the factors placed on a specific level are continuously influenced and conditioned simultaneously by the other levels. Creativity as a mental process Within this level, creativity is conceived as happening in our minds through a series of mental steps built on our own natural thinking process that deliberately ignites creative thinking and produces innovative solutions (Amabile 1983, 2012; Corazza and Agnoli 2015; Isaksen et al. 2000; Scott et al. 2004; Wallas 2014). The human creative process makes use of the cognitive structures and the mental mechanisms that are shared by all the individuals occurring when engaging in a creative activity. Creativity is the sum of all these types of processes, and their employment in a particular situation or context can be influenced by social, cultural, and environmental factors. Within this level, we included both the Creativity Relevant Processes and the Knowledge and Skills components whose factors are strictly connected to the cognitive dimension of human beings and on their ability to understand existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. As has been apparent from the exploration of Digital Creativity, new factors have emerged in these two components. Indeed, the diffusion of Internet and connected technologies increases the risks of intellectual blocks caused by a cognitive overload of information. This can disrupt the divergent phase of the creative process, weakening the conceptual combination process, creating difficulties in integrating the information when attempting to form new ideas (Huber 1990), as well as in isolating the problem. This risk can be ameliorated by training and developing the ability to manage the abundance of information, finding reliable sources and learning how to deal with and organize them. At the same time, today some digital technologies can be used to decrease the cognitive overload of human beings because they are capable of managing all this abundance of information better than a human can do. This technology can process huge amounts of information and learn from and analyse them, providing patterns and association facilitating the human cognitive effort within the creative process. Digital technologies can reproduce most of the human creativity-relevant factors to boost human creativity, thus enabling the achievement of states of flow and high peak performances. As discussed in the previous chapters, in the digital era there is a strong demand for a set of new skills to master new digital devices and new technologies and to face the complexity brought by this transition. The challenges to solve have increased in complexity, requiring a multidisciplinary approach and teamwork or cooperation with info specialists or project stakeholders. Therefore, creative activities require the development of new soft skills (The Partnership of 21st Century Skills 2008) beside the technical ones, such as digital

7.3 Multiple Levels of Creativity in the Digital Age

107

literacy, meaning both the acquisition of digital skills and the understanding of the potentialities of digital technologies in terms of social and cultural opportunities. This competence, together with a deep understanding of the creative process, allow to explore and anticipate people’s opportunities and needs and adopting cutting-edge technologies for their service. Other important competences to develop are collaboration abilities and communication and network-building abilities which involve the evaluation of the appropriate channels for different situations and getting things done, developing and maintaining partnerships, negotiating skills, team-building skills, decision making and conflict resolution. Those skills enable people to create and share digital content but also to communicate, collaborate, and solve problems for effective and creative self-fulfilment in life, learning, work, and social activities at large, taking advantage of digital technologies potentialities. The development of such skills represents today a major challenge for companies, schools, and public authorities. Therefore, they have been included and integrated in the model. The comprehensive set of factors included in this level is shown in Fig. 7.3. Creativity as an individual practice On the individual level, creativity is considered as an individual practice intended as action rather than thought or ideas. This level brings out the concrete and active side of the creative activity. Creativity takes place over time, and most of the creativity occurs while doing the work. Sawyer (2012) state that “The medium is an essential part of the creative process and creators often get ideas while working with their materials” (p. 88). Creativity is considered as a ‘practice’ because it emerges from, constitutes, and makes sense of “forms of bodily activity, things and their use, background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz 2002, p. 249). As a practice, creativity evolves over the time because of the active integration of tangible resources, motivations, and capabilities and skills (Shove et al. 2012) and is influenced by the physical environment in which the activity takes place.

Fig. 7.3 Factors of creativity relevant in the digital transition included in the cognitive level. They are the result of the explorations of the digital creativity domain through the Creativity 4.0 model

108

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

On this level, many factors interact, some of which are related to the inner side of the individuals and strictly dependent on them and their backgrounds and that can change from individual to individual. These include all the factors belonging to the Motivation and Attitude component, and the Emotion component that could have an important influence on both the motivational factors and the cognitive process located on the cognitive level. Motivation is an aspect that appears to be more than ever necessary to activate people’s interest in a challenge, project, or a community. Researchers have noted the importance of intrinsic motivation and positive affect in moderating the potential for distractibility caused by Internet technology and facilitated multitasking behaviours, which have been linked with reduced learning, especially in the classroom. Self-expression has become therefore a new crucial driver of motivation in the digital era, where digital means allowing people to express themselves in new ways, to make original and valued contributions, and broaden opportunities for realizing one’s imagination (Loveless 2003). This generates an unprecedented number of elements in the digital realm available for creative action and reaction (Literat and Glaveanu 2018). They enable an easy interaction with inspiring and successful digital content, ideas, and projects which produces a form of positive stimulation from a motivational point of view, as well as an inspiration for the generation of new ideas, opportunities, and visions. The adoption of digital technologies and tools can support motivation in some ways. Indeed, technologies such as Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality could modify the environment in which the idea is generated, creating new ad hoc immersive environments that impact on affect and playfulness and contribute to maintaining a high level of engagement among participants. Indeed, digital technologies can empower the emotional factors, allowing individual to feel totally engaged in the activity, while increasing one’s risk-taking attitude and therefore decision making. In some cases, they can help in overcoming some emotional blocks to improve self-efficacy. Digital technologies can be adopted to design tools that in some ways can guide the activity within the process by showing and tracking the progress made and the results achieved or by providing a real-time response to some action that guides reflection and decision making. Motivations, attitudes, and emotions can be strongly influenced by the environmental factors—both physical and social. The comprehensive set of factors included in this level is shown in Fig. 7.4. Creativity as a social process Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, much of our intelligence and creativity results from interaction and collaboration with other individuals (Csikszentmihalyi 1996) to exploit spatial, temporal, conceptual, and technological barriers (Fischer 2004) caused by distance as sources of new and innovative ideas. Within the social dimension of humans, creativity is considered as a social process, meaning that they could happen both in collaboration with other people or that can be influenced by networking, talking, and sharing thoughts and

7.3 Multiple Levels of Creativity in the Digital Age

109

Fig. 7.4 Factors of creativity relevant in the digital transition included in the individual level. They are the result of the explorations of the digital creativity domain through the Creativity 4.0 model

ideas with other people. Over recent decades, with the advent of ICTs, individuals and the society have started a process of transformation to become more and more interconnected. This level has therefore gained an increased importance because ICTs provide new opportunities for creative networking and expanded group creativity and therefore social creativity (Fischer 2004). Fischer et al. (2007) defined the term social creativity as working together to solve a problem with the help of computer media and technologies. Within this level, are migrating all the human factors related to the social interactions with other people included in the Environment component. These are: Sharing ideas to others, Generating idea with others, Emotional and technical support from others, mentorship, multidisciplinarity. The comprehensive set of factors included in this level is shown in Fig. 7.5.

7.4

Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model

The Creativity 4.0 model enables the organization of the factors of creativity identifying how they are influenced in the digital transition and which are the most relevant according to three human levels previously mentioned. It helps to understand how the digital transition is impacting the cognitive process taking place during a creative activity, the competences, motivation, tools needed and the interaction with other stakeholders for the enhancement of its creative potential.

Fig. 7.5 Factors of creativity relevant in the digital transition included in the social level. They are the result of the explorations of the digital creativity domain through the Creativity 4.0 model

110

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

The Creativity 4.0 model, therefore, is intended to constitute a design tool to guide a structured exploration of the knowledge within the Digital Creativity realm to continue to analyse and understand the influences of the digital evolution on human creativity, using the main elements of the model and their intersection as a frame of reference. These elements define the guidelines to observe the digital impacts, to understand their effects on human creative ability, specifying what are the most relevant influences in the digital era. Therefore, the model can be adopted by practitioners and researchers in the design discipline but also in psychology and sociology to reach different objectives. Firstly, the model can be used to identify the main changes that the technological advancements are bringing to the multiple dimensions of human beings, considering both the inner cognitive, motivational, emotional components and the outer relationships with others. This makes it possible to keep track of the evolving generational traits of human beings. To observe the impacts that the digital transition has brought on the multiple dimensions of humans, the first two main elements of the model should be superimposed (Fig. 7.6). This mean that the three human levels should be used as a lens to explore and analyse research from neuroscience, psychology, and sociology that focus on the co-evolution between human and digital technologies (Fig. 7.7). This will enable to

Fig. 7.6 Observe the impacts. Intersection between the two elements of the model which activate the impacts on the three levels

7.4 Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model

111

identify the major recognized changes and effects caused by the diffused and widespread adoption of digital technologies by human beings and more broadly by the society. For example, as described in Chap. 2, through the analysis of literature, keeping the cognitive level as a lens, it emerges that the diffusion of the Internet, with its hypertext environments and the easier retrieval of online information, is changing the human cognitive abilities of reading and processing information, characterized by quick scanning, reduced contemplation, and memory consolidation (see p. 29). The impact on all the three levels presented in the second chapter have been identified by intersecting these two elements (Fig. 7.8). These levels are not separate and discrete, rather they do influence each other because they are part of a same unit, namely, the human being. However, acknowledging the distinction of the dimensions within human beings enables to observe and encompass a significant number of impacts and changes. Secondly, the model can be used to identify the main influences on the creative abilities due to technological and human advancements and co-evolution. To understand the influences on human creative abilities, the three elements of the model should be superimposed. In this way, the factors of creativity can be used for a more detailed investigation of the co-evolution of humans and technology. The creativity factors that are localized on each level now activate and polarize towards the impacts that influence them. Therefore, in this step, the division into three levels is not considered

Fig. 7.7 Observing the impact of the digital evolution on human beings through the model

112

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

Fig. 7.8 Impacts identified on the three levels

anymore since the impacts identified on each level can have influences on the factors located on any of the three levels (Fig. 7.9). Indeed, the impacts identified on three levels are placed into relation with the factors of creativity to understand how these are positively or negatively influenced (Fig. 7.10). For example, as shown in Chap. 5, the Internet technologies are reducing critical thinking concerning the information and long-term memory consolidation which could have repercussions on the development of the individual culture and on the process of memory retrieval important for the quality and the originality of ideas and projects. The Internet environment is therefore reducing human abilities in deep processing of information, increasing the occurrence of intellectual blocks with negative influences on the creative process. In this way, by observing the changes and understanding the influences, it is also possible to identify and evaluate the most relevant and influential factors of digital creativity and identify new factors and stimuli to empower human creative potential within the creative process. Thirdly, the model can be used to identify the potential and opportunities offered by contemporary digital technologies in enhancing, augmenting, and stimulating creativity. This exploration can be performed in two consequent steps too. In the first step, the three elements are interconnected in order to observe the opportunities

7.4 Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model

113

Fig. 7.9 Understand the influences. Representation of the intersection between the three elements of the model in their dynamic version. The factors of creativity located on each level are now activated and attracted by the impacts that influence them

Fig. 7.10 Understanding the influences on the human creative abilities through the model

114

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

of using digital technologies on the three dimensions of the creative process: the cognitive process, the individual practice, and the social process. These three dimensions can be used as a lens to review projects and research studies from the domains of Human Computer Interaction and computer science that explore and experiment with the potentialities of using some digital technology to enhance the creative process. In the second step, the factors are activated to understand the enhancement of human creative abilities. Indeed, each project or tool is placed into relation with the factors of creativity to understand how technology can empower them. The second exploration of Digital Creativity, presented in Chap. 6, has been pursued by adopting the model in this way (Fig. 7.11).

Fig. 7.11 Second exploration of digital creativity. The model supports the identification of projects, cases, and research that investigate the use of digital technologies in the creative process and their analysis through the factors

7.4 Guidelines to Observe Digital Creativity Through the Model

115

Within the research presented in this book, the model has been used to guide the two explorations in the Digital Creativity domain and has been used as a filter for the identification of the information. Therefore, it facilitates the integration and interpretation of the creativity factors, the blocks, and the impacts that can facilitate or inhibit creativity on the three levels. The model helps to systematize knowledge about creativity with respect to the impact affected by the digital transition and its technologies, while considering that new disruptive technology will continue to emerge. It expands the awareness of creativity in design to provide an overview of the all the human components and factors that could be empowered to increase human creative potential. Designers and educators can indeed use the creativity level and their factors, such as analogic thinking or self-expression or mentorship to mention some, to design activities and specific methods that enhance them. Empowering Digital Creativity indeed means empowering the factors of creativity responsible for human creativity.

References Amabile, T.M.: The social psychology of creativity: a componential conceptualization. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45(2), 357 (1983) Amabile, T.M.: Creativity and innovation in organizations. Harvard Business School Background Note, 396-239 (1996) Amabile, T.M.: Componential Theory of Creativity. Harvard Business School, Working paper, No. 12-096 (2012) Buchanan, M.T., Hyde, B.: Learning beyond the surface: engaging the cognitive, affective and spiritual dimensions within the curriculum. Int. J. Child. Spirit. 13(4), 309–320 (2008) Corazza, G.E., Agnoli, S.: On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans. In: MCCSIS Conference 2015 Proceedings, Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (2015) Csikszentmihalyi, M.: The creative personality. Psychol. Today 29(4), 36–40 (1996) Dubberly, H.: How Do You Design. A Compendium of Models. Dubberly Design Office (2004) Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M.: Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications. The MIT Press, Cambridge, US (1992) Fischer, G.: Social creativity: turning barriers into opportunities for collaborative design. In: PDC 2004—Proceedings of the Eight Participatory Design Conference 2004—Artful Integration: Interweaving Media, Materials and Practices, pp. 152–161 (2004) Fischer, G., Rohde, M., Wulf, V.: Community-based learning: the core competency of residential, research-based universities. Comput. Supp. Collab. Learn. 2(1), 9–40 (2007) Glăveanu, V.P.: How are we creative together? Comparing sociocognitive and sociocultural answers. Theory Psychol. 21(4), 473–492 (2011) Huber, G.P.: A theory of the effects of advanced information technologies on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making. Acad. Manag. Rev. 15, 47–71 (1990) Huitt, W.: A systems approach to the study of human behavior. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA (2012). Retrieved from http://www. edpsycinteractive.org/materials/sysmdlo.html. Last accessed 15 Dec 2020 Isaksen, S.G., Dorval, K.B., Treffinger, D.J.: Creative Approaches to Problem Solving: A Framework for Change, 2nd edn. Creative Problem Solving Group, Buffalo, NY (2000) Literat, I., Glăveanu, V.P.: Same but different? Distributed creativity in the internet age. Creativity. Theor. Res. Appl. 3(2), 330–342 (2016)

116

7 Creativity 4.0 Model: A Conceptual Model …

Literat, I., Glaveanu, V.P.: Distributed creativity on the internet: a theoretical foundation for online creative participation. Int. J. Commun. 893–908 (2018) Loveless, A.: Creating spaces in the primary curriculum: ICT in creative subjects. Curr. J. 14(1), 5–21 (2003) Lubart, T.I., Mouchiroud, C., Tordjman, S., Zenasni, F.: Psychologie de la créativité [Psychology of creativity]. Armand Collin, Paris (2003) Reckwitz, A.: Toward a theory of social practices. A development in culturalist theorizing. Eur. J. Soc. Theory 5, 243–263 (2002) Sawyer, R.K.: Explaining creativity: the science of human innovation. University Press, Oxford (2012) Scott, G., Leritz, L.E., Mumford, M.D.: The effectiveness of creativity training: a quantitative review. Creat. Res. J. 16(4), 354–361 (2004) Shove, E., Pantzar, M., Watson, M.: The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How it Changes. Sage, London (2012) Sternberg, R.J., Lubart, T.I.: Defying the crowd: cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. Free Press, New York (1995) The Partnership of 21st Century Skills.: 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness. A Resource and Policy Guide (2008) Wallas, G.: The Art of Thought, Solis Press, First Ed. 1926 (2014) Ward, T.B.: Creative cognition, conceptual combination, and the creative writing of Stephen R. Donaldson. Am. Psychol. 56(4), 350–354 (2001)

Chapter 8

Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework for Creative Empowerment

8.1

Introduction

The identified factors of digital creativity, if developed and stimulated, can increase the degree of creativity throughout the multiple phases of the creative process. The creative process is intrinsic to design (Bonnardel et al. 2018). When an individual commences a design process to solve a design challenge, this automatically activates the mental creative process influenced by attitudes, motivation, skills, emotion, and the social environment. There is therefore a relationship between the factors of digital creativity and the design process. For design research and practice, this relationship becomes strategic if structured within a theoretical framework that integrates the factors with the design process. In this way, the framework could support a deep analysis and understanding of how the digital transition is also influencing the design process and its creative factors. As was established in the second part of the book, many different disciplines among them including design, psychology, and computer science, are producing studies that analyse those influences, but they are fragmented within the literature. Therefore, the framework aims to interconnect all the studies, mapping the state of art of the positive and negative influences brought by the human and technological evolution of this century. It represents a design-oriented overview of the impact of the digital transition on creativity, and it defines the boundaries of how to support the creative expression within the creative design process. The chapter presents the Creativity 4.0 Framework—built from the results and reflections of the previous analysis—whose aim is to provide a deep understanding of the changes that influence creative expression within the design process. The framework—that deconstructs the design process in steps, activities and factors of creativity—shows all the influences and opportunities that can enable or inhibit the creative aspects of the design process. Indeed, it becomes strategic for the design research because it enables the understanding of the new digital opportunities to empower and augment the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_8

117

118

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

creative design process, as well as the ability to creatively guide the strategic adoption of digital technologies. Empowering such an ability enables humans to acquire maturity towards the evolution of digital technologies. Therefore, the framework represents the design tool for reaching a digital maturity.

8.2

Relevance of the Framework for Design: Nature and Objectives

In the design research, much effort has been made to define the many phases and activities occurring in the creative process of a designer. Of course, every design specialist has a different approach and ways of working, but there are some commonalities in their processes since they rely on the creative process. Many researchers have dedicated their work to collect these commonalities and define models to describe and provide a process configuration. Indeed, there are many attempts that review and synthesise the different process models into an overarching taxonomy (Mendel 2012; Wynn and Clarkson 2005; Design Council 2007). Mothersill and Bove (2018) noted that “This is partly due to the fact that design can have many meanings; no longer just focusing on the aesthetics of an industrially produced artefact (McCullough 1998), the design methods movement expanded the definition of the design process to include the activities of design research and idea generation (Michel 2007)” (p. 1,262, 3:10). One of the main collection of processes comes from Dubberly (2004) which analysed and described 88 of them coming from diverse areas. All of these process configurations show a simplified and linear structure of the creative design process, generally dividing the overall process into steps or phases. They are built upon creative process models proposed in psychology that describe the mental steps based upon our own natural thinking process that deliberately ignites creative thinking and produces innovative solutions (Amabile 1983, 2012; Corazza and Agnoli 2015; Isaksen et al. 2000; Wallas 2014). In reality, it is not at all a perfectly linear process, and the steps are often concurrent and cyclical (Fig. 8.1) because iteration—both by cycling through the process multiple times, and also by iterating within a step or two—is a fundamental of good design that allows one to narrow down the scope. Also, each individual has to internalise and adapt it to his or her own style of work. Despite this, Wynn and Clarkson (2005) commented that: “There is no single model which is agreed to provide a satisfactory description of the design process [and] no ‘silver bullet’ method which can be universally applied to achieve process improvement.” Therefore, to build the framework, I have decided to create an ad hoc configuration of a creative design process that comprises elements from some of the design and creativity model that have been analysed and compared (Amabile 2012;

8.2 Relevance of the Framework for Design: Nature and Objectives

119

Fig. 8.1 A “closer-to-reality” representation of the design thinking process. On the left, the standard form. To the right, something closer to reality (Meinel and Leifer 2010)

Corazza and Agnoli 2015; Mothersill and Bove 2017; Sawyer 2012) to define an integrated process that could better support the mapping of the factors of creativity. The resulting creative design process that, for simplicity, has been represented as a linear progression, constitutes the framework structure (described in the next section) integrates the mental mechanism involved while solving a design challenge and the activity to be carry out. The framework structure has the main objectives of facilitating the allocation of the factors of digital creativity that are responsible for increasing the level of creativity throughout a design process. This allocation helps the framework to become an analytical tool able to map and understand the state of the art of the positive and negative influences on the individual creative abilities in the design process, enabling also the identification of how digital technologies can facilitate and augment creativity within the design process. To meet this need, the structure has to be made clear, simple, and detailed. Therefore, the framework is composed by three main parts: • The creative design process model: It represents the framework structure that enables mapping the factors of digital creativity. It can be considered as a cross-domain process model able to support the development of specific training methods to discipline the process leading to the generation of new ideas; • The factors of digital creativity: those referred to motivation and attitude, knowledge and skills, creativity relevant processes, emotion, and social environment factors. The factors are mapped throughout the creative design process in order to clarify an understanding of which factors intervene and support each step. • The positive and negative influences of the digital transition on the creative abilities: respectively enablers and inhibitors—identified during the analysis that represent the contextual elements influencing the human components and their

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

120

factors: those that influence could affect the creativity factors, as well as the activities of the design process. Therefore, a great part of the framework highlights those influences to simplify the understanding of which action one could take in order to empower some step of the process and to obtain better results. The research and the framework enable organising the fragmented data collected within the literature from diverse fields and disciplines and give them a new interpretation and a new meaning, providing members of various research disciplines a common language and a frame of reference for defining the boundaries of a complex phenomenon, such as creativity in the digital age. The Creativity 4.0 Framework therefore represents a map in progress of the enablers and inhibitors brought by the digital transition that influence the individual digital creativity factors in the design process.

8.3

Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework Structure and Its Factors

The Creativity 4.0 Framework has been built with the idea of developing strategies to reveal a rational pattern for the most tacit design activities that could help identify areas where the creative factors can intervene and also identify how digital technologies can potentially enhance or inhibit our creativity. The framework puts into perspective the creative design process with the analysed factors in order to provide a tool that could inform on how to empower the human creative potential within the creative design process by taking advantage of the new opportunity provided by the digital transition. The Creativity 4.0 Framework has been built in two consequent steps. The first step aims at creating and defining the framework fundamental structure that represents the design process model. It is a cross-domain process leading to the generation of new ideas. The second step aims to map the crucial factors of digital creativity—included in the motivation and attitude, knowledge and skills, creativity relevant processes, emotion, and social-environment components—on the framework structure. This mapping has the objective of clarifying which factors are involved in the enhancement of the distinct steps of the design process. As a result, the Creativity 4.0 Framework informs the design process with the creative thinking style to adopt in each step along with the cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social factors that influence the individual creative potential in the process. Step 1—defining the framework structure The Creativity 4.0 Framework is based on a simplified yet exhaustive version of the human-centred creative design process (IDEActivity 2014, 2017) that uses the potential of creativity and the approach of design thinking to support individuals

8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework …

121

from different backgrounds to actively experience the development of ideas or strategies. The process focuses on two main consequent stages: Explore and Generate. The first stage, Explore, makes possible the creation of a knowledge basis from which a significant and potentially viable goal can be defined and its possible development in relation to a given context. Within this stage, an analytical process of information interpretation is fundamental to identify opportunities. The second stage, Generate, aims at the generation of suitable concepts in line with the given context and the prototyping of innovative ideas. Each stage of the process uses two main consequent mental modes (Fig. 8.2): • Divergent mode which refers to the ‘creation’ or ‘widening’ of a field of possibilities. During the divergent mode a large number of alternatives are identified since the most important rule is: ‘quality is quantity’, in order to generate as much information and as many new ideas as possible. Divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, ‘non-linear’ manner, so that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. Free association plays an important role during this period. In addition, the rule of not judging inputs is essential. When confronted with new inputs, ideas, or concepts, it is important to take a constructive stance. • Convergent mode in which there is a narrowing of choices, based on criteria of what is useful and relevant (Tassoul and Buijs 2007). After diverging, information and ideas are organised and structured using convergent thinking. In this Convergent mode, all input and ideas receive the benefit of the doubt, but the alternatives chosen are then evaluated and selected through meaningful criteria.

Fig. 8.2 Divergence and convergence modes within the explore and generate stages

122

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

This phase enables to arrive at one concrete answer or solution, following a set of logical steps. The Explore and Generate stages have a total of five explicit steps, each one with specific objectives, and each one characterised by a thinking style that drives the generation of a specific output. Each step has a divergent and convergent phase, which define the activities happening within the step, in order to provide a process for managing thinking and action, while avoiding premature or inappropriate judgement. Each step output represents the input of the consequent step (Fig. 8.3). The explorative stage of the process included three steps: Engage, Clarify and Define that represent the first, second and third steps of the process. Engage. This is the first step whose main aim is to identify the focus/vision to explore along with the motivation to generate in that particular area. Engage sparks the entire creative design process. Within this stage, the domain area and the seed idea that will drive the process are identified, as well as the organisation and set up of the entire process in terms of tools and strategies. The activity within this step is to find a vision or the issue to explore that leads to the identification of the focus area where a new idea must be generated. When starting a personal project, it is fundamental to reflect deeply on personal interests, natural personal inclinations and what can bring enjoyment and satisfaction. If starting a new business project, it is fundamental to reflect on the desired kinds of change to apply in the organisation, i.e. what is working and what is not. A deep understanding of the potentialities of digital technologies and the social and cultural opportunities that they are able to bring is helpful in this activity in order to exploit the fundamental changes of the digital era. Therefore, it would be productive to observe innovative best practices to explore those opportunities. The second transversal activity is to set up the process. This activity is not part of a natural thinking process occurring in the mind of a creator but emerges from an increased need for planning due to the complexity of contemporary design challenges. The increased complexity and uncertainty of the contemporary challenges require more often than ever involving a multidisciplinary team, as well as digital tools and technologies in order to achieve results that humans alone cannot (Malone 2018). Organising the process has become therefore a preparatory activity before

Fig. 8.3 The creative design process representing the framework basic structure. The design process has been deconstructed in stages, steps, activities, and thinking style

8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework …

123

moving to the consequent step, in order to get the best out of the process and the people involved. Within the Engage step, it is fundamental to adopt a Strategic thinking style that makes possible identifying the critical issues that must be addressed and the pathways needed to move toward the desired future. Clarify. The aim of this step is to bring the goal clearly into focus as a goal that is not fully understood cannot be met. Building on personal knowledge and initial hunches, within this step, it is fundamental to collect diverse information about the vision and intuitively structure the often disparate data to reveal patterns and gather insights. In this step, it is important to look at the world in a fresh way, notice things and try to understand the current situations. The first activity is to acquire knowledge and gather disparate sets of information: use initial insights to collect information related to the vision. Explore information in various different contexts and diverge to find analogies and other abstract information. The second activity is to sort, interpret and visualize information, grouping information to allow for comparison and analysis, while organizing and juxtaposing the disparate sets of data gathered in research to reveal patterns and highlighting key factors. Within the Clarify step, it is fundamental to adopt a Diagnostic thinking style that allows carefully examining a situation, describing the nature of a problem and making decisions about appropriate process steps to be taken. Define. The aim of this step is to transform the information collected into design opportunities. Within this step, it is fundamental to make sense of all the possibilities identified, while developing a clear creative brief that frames the fundamental design challenge. A deep study of the data gathered and the use of imagination to juxtapose the information in unobvious ways are needed to unlock the current situations, to reach an understanding of the gaps, relationships and unmet needs. The first activity is to analyse data and generate hypotheses by recomposing information in many ways to create stories for possible design alternatives, allowing for ambiguity and multiple interpretations. The second activity is to identify and select a novel direction by recombining and mutating information to allow for a moment of illumination. Within this activity, it is fundamental to define criteria and requirements needed to reach the objective. Within the Define step, it is fundamental to adopt a Visionary thinking style that support articulating a vivid image of what one desire to create. The generative stage of the process is divided into two steps: Ideate and Build to Think that represent the fourth and fifth steps of the process. Ideate. The aim of this step is to generate one or more novel ideas that are meaningful for the design challenge framed. During this step, many ideas are first envisioned and generated and then evaluated and prioritised for the areas identified. The first activity is to search for inspiration and generate many ideas. It is fundamental to stimulate creativity and to search for inspiration in different contexts

124

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

to spark the imagination. Within this activity, it is important to come up with as many ideas as possible, in a free and non-judgemental way and to visualise ideas through sketches. The second activity is to combine ideas and select the most promising in which the ideas generated are clustered into affinity groups, evaluated according to feasibility and originality criteria and then selected in order to converge on a single, strong idea to be worked on for the rest of the process. Within the Ideate step, it is fundamental to adopt an Ideational thinking style that makes possible a flow from idea to idea that leads to the production of a novel and original mental pattern, in the form of images and thoughts that respond and satisfy the initial challenge. Build to think. This step aims at enriching and refining the idea through the development of tangible artefacts that make it concrete and that support building and visualising the future envisioned solution. This step provides also iterative cycles of learning and validation of the solution through feedback collection that supports a continuous learning approach and leads to an eventual validation of the idea. In the end, the idea is described concretely. The first activity is to externalise the idea by building “rough prototypes” that visualise the selected idea tangibly. By manipulating and assembling materials three-dimensionally, individuals are able to assess the quality of their idea. The second activity is to search for feedback and define the concept. It is fundamental to share the concrete idea with others and to collect observations, criticism and comments about the developed idea. This helps to rationalise all open thoughts, to further evaluate and improve through further cycle of convergent iterations. Within the Build to Think step, it is fundamental to adopt an Evaluative thinking style that allows evaluating the ideas generated in term of reasonableness, quality and appropriateness with respect to the challenge defined, in order to develop workable solutions. Once the framework structure has been defined, it is possible to map the factors of digital creativity directly onto the different steps of the process or on specific activities. This mapping aims at informing a framework that puts into perspective the most relevant factors of creativity with the design process in the digital age. Step 2—mapping the factors of digital creativity The first mapping of the digital creativity factors aims to inform which factors should be enhanced in the various steps of the process to achieve greater results. It has been supported by the combination of the knowledge of the process-activities description and the literature on the componential model of creativity discussed in Chap. 4 since they already provide knowledge on how the main components of creativity influence the creative process. This is fundamental to support the mapping of the factors resulting from the analysis in each step of the process. Starting from the human cognitive level (Fig. 8.4), the Knowledge and Skills component factors play their most important role in the Clarify step where the

8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework …

125

Fig. 8.4 Mapping the creativity-relevant processes factors and knowledge and skills factors on the framework process structure

individual builds up or reactivates a store of information relevant to the problem or task. A higher level of domain knowledge could support proceeding faster in this step, but this is not always the case. Indeed, empirical researches (Simon 1983) showed that the important distinction of this factor is not the amount of knowledge stored but rather the way in which the knowledge is stored within categories and the ease with which it can be accessed. The domain knowledge factor is important also in the Build-to-Think stage where the built idea is validated and tested for appropriateness and correctness against the knowledge and the criteria within the domain knowledge. Therefore, it is important that the skills needed throughout the creative process be organized and provided before entering the process in the organisational set up activity within the Engage step. Creativity relevant processes and attitudes are mainly required in the Define and Ideate steps in which the novelty of the opportunities identified and of the response generated are determined. The factors within this component determine the flexibility with which cognitive pathways are explored and the attention directed at particular information or aspects. Moving to the individual level (Fig. 8.5), Amabile argues that intrinsic motivation is fundamental for the domain identification and the initial engagement in the creative process. Motivational factors play a prominent role in the Engage step. A high level of intrinsic motivation is also needed in the steps where novelty is determined and therefore in the Define and Ideate steps. Instead, a stronger extrinsic motivation that influences the intrinsic one might benefit “those stages that contribute most to the usefulness—the appropriateness or correctness—of the ideas, and where the activities might be particularly tedious” (Amabile and Pratt 2016, p. 176). This happens, for example, in the Clarify and Build-to-Think steps.

126

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

Fig. 8.5 Mapping the motivation and attitude factors and emotion factors on the framework process structure

As already highlighted in Chap. 6, a high level of intrinsic motivation can enhance all the other components, and therefore “enhanced intrinsic motivation should directly or indirectly enhance every stage of the creative process, leading to solutions that are both more novel and more useful” (Amabile and Pratt 2016). Some of the attitudes such as perseverance can have a stronger impact on the convergent steps of the process where the knowledge and creative relevant components have to be repeatedly applied. Creative attitudes are also fundamental at the beginning of the Engage stage in order to support the creator to start the process. Regarding the Emotion factors, Amabile and Pratt (2016) believe that “positive affect primarily influences individual creativity via its effects on two components, intrinsic motivation and creativity relevant processes”. Therefore, they are most likely to positively influence the Engage step, as well as the Define and Ideate steps, because it is at these stages that intrinsic motivation plays its most prominent role. Positive affect also impacts creativity-relevant processes because, as noted by theorists, “positive affect leads to a broadening of cognitive associations” (Fredrickson 1998; Isen 1999a, b, cited by Amabile and Pratt 2016, p. 175) increasing the novelty of ideas generate in the Ideate step. Moving to the social level (Fig. 8.6), these factors are considered as transversal to the whole process since they benefit both the divergent and convergent modes of the process. Those factors can influence both the activities of the process and the others components.

8.3 Creativity 4.0 Framework. Describing the Framework …

127

Fig. 8.6 Mapping the social factors on the framework process structure

The framework becomes therefore an analytical tool for understanding and analysing the influences of the digital transition on the individual creative abilities in the design process. The next section describes the enablers and inhibitors that can be considered as the most important influences that the digital transition is bringing on creativity. The enablers and inhibitors correspond to the influences, identified through the Creativity 4.0 model, while exploring the Digital Creativity domain mapped on the framework structure. They are the result of the intersection between the impacts identified, the human creativity factors selected and a reference literature with respect to digital creativity, case studies and interviews with experts in digital creativity. A total of 17 influences (Fig. 8.7) have been mapped on the creative design process highlighting opportunities and threats brought by the digital transition. They constitute a first collection of influences that the digital transition has brought on multiple aspects of human creative abilities and that can be enriched through further exploration. This is not proposed to be an exhaustive collection, and it should be seen as a work in progress to continuously inform the design process evolution. This mapping results in a set of layers that can also inform how to exploit the digital and social opportunities offered by this scenario of transition related to the use of digital technologies. In this way, the Framework can provide the important information to design actions to empower the individual creative abilities in the design process.

128

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

Fig. 8.7 Set of enablers and inhibitors mapped on the Creativity 4.0 framework

8.4

Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age

By deconstructing the design process in stages, steps, activities and thinking style, the framework makes it possible to map the less rationale creativity factors emphasizing their interconnections and to show how the impacts of the digital transition influence the activities, the creative factors and the overall design process. In this section are collected the main enablers and inhibitors of the creative design process. They could either influence the entire process, or some steps of it, or the factors of creativity within the step. In the following subsection, they are presented according to the positive and negative actions they have on the entire process, on the steps of the Explore stage and the Generate stage. Process enabler: a new form of collective exploration Within online creative communities, people are active participators who share ideas, knowledge and skills collaborating to form a collective and open knowledge. The digital transition has catalysed the creation of a collaborative mindset in which the learning process is not an individual one, but rather a shared practice among the educational or working community. The possibilities to share ideas with peers and experts with different backgrounds have been enhanced, with the consequent empowerment of the factors of creativity-relevant processes. Indeed, creating and sharing ideas and knowledge with others empowers, among the others, the analogical reasoning, the ability to shift perspective, the ability to creatively fuse and combine concepts that are relevant factors and that intervene in almost the entire process. Everyone can easily interact within very diversified cultural environments, increasing the potential for generating a new type of vision.

8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age

129

Feeling part of a larger community made up of people who share the same objective or similar interests, with transparent rules, and being recognised by the community, increase the intrinsic motivation of the people involved. Process enabler: a new form of collective evaluation In the digital transition, new ways of collective creation and collaboration in the online environment are emerging. This exponentially enhances the possibility to ask for suggestions, encouragement, technical and emotional support, mentorship across geographic and cultural boundaries, while receiving instant feedback that can be immediately integrated in the creative process. The distributed and instant feedback to ideas support humans in their self-reflections in action, speeding up the process of idea refinement and improvement. It can be considered as a distributed form of emotional support and encouragement where users can also perceive progress in their work, boosting their engagement, motivation, and the originality of ideas generated. Process enabler: guiding human through the process activities, lowering barriers and supporting iteration Digital tools and devices could give users instant feedback to their actions, supporting humans in self-reflection, supporting people in testing possibilities quickly, understanding which is the best route to pursue, and improving decision making. Also, most of the guiding digital tools are designed to lower skills barriers and to facilitate externalisation and creative visualisation of the information, ideas and solutions produced during the process, thus empowering reflection, decision making and facilitating communication with others within a group. This can speed up the iterative process of refinement and improvement throughout the entire process to support, in particular, the convergent mode of each steps where a decision has to be taken in order to make progress in the work. Process enabler: creating inspiring augmented and immersive environments Some digital technologies can create virtual immersive realities and an environment that empower the emotional factors of the individual, who feels totally engaged in the activity and consequently increasing a risk-taking attitude and therefore decision making. Indeed, they augment the communication channel between people and objects, establishing better dialog and interaction, while supporting reflection-inaction and activates curiosity, interest and inspiration. This can be a powerful tool in the convergent mode of the creative design process, and, in particular, in the Define step where it is important to generate hypotheses based on the information gathered and to identify a novel direction to pursue. In the ideation step, virtual environments can bring people to where our imagination alone cannot. Indeed, they can transform the reality by showing something that doesn’t exist, changing also temporarily our own identity. This stimulates and nurtures structured imagination and perspective shift, allowing also to overcome fixation blocks that cause the creator to be stuck on a small number of unvaried solutions and boosting the search for inspiration and the idea generation.

130

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

Augmenting the physical environment through AR and projection can enhance creative visualisation and communication between teams through immersive externalisation that emotionally engage individual within the process. Process enabler: requiring new skills for creative practice Contemporary challenges have become increasingly complex and more uncertain than ever before and require the involvement of multidisciplinary team, as well as digital tools and technologies to achieve results that humans alone cannot (Malone 2018). In the ongoing scenario of transition, there emerge the fundamental need of developing a digital literacy that means being able to use digital technologies and understand their potentialities in terms of social and cultural opportunities in order to innovate in a digital scenario. It also means being able to navigate and manage the information in an era of abundance. In this digital era, it is fundamental to develop basic technical skills in the areas of software development, language programming, management of technological devices and development of sensors-based automated systems. The combination of digital literacy and technical skills enables exploration and the anticipation of opportunities and needs, as well as adopting cutting-edge technologies for human service. As mentioned earlier, understanding the creative process is another fundamental factor that drives the process and allows to adopt the most prominent digital technologies to enhance specific steps of the process. Professional will increasingly design human–machine collaboration processes to achieve multiple and unexpected solutions they had never imagined before. Indeed, new active digital technologies, such as the generative design, requires a new kind of thinking and a deep understanding of the process to collaborate with other stakeholders with diversified technical skills. Effective communication and collaboration ability involve the evaluation of the appropriate channels for various situations and getting things done, developing and maintaining partnerships, negotiating skill, teambuilding skills, decision making and conflict resolution. Process inhibitor: reducing perseverance and average attention span/focus The multitasking behaviour caused by digital devices plus the solutions, stimuli and activities always at hand, are decreasing the attention span of the humans (Loh and Kanai 2016). Let’s think, for example, of the multitude of brain inputs we continuously receive from our phones, laptop, social networks, emails, indeed, all the digital devices. Patience, determination and grit, which are the ingredients of the perseverance attitude, can be seriously undermined. The digital evolution can weaken perseverance which becomes a relevant factor in the digital era to be trained and stimulated. Researchers (Shapiro and Niederhauser 2004; Moos and Marroquin 2010; Carrier et al. 2015; Rosen et al. 2011) have noted the importance of motivation and positive affect in moderating the distractibility introduced by Internet technology.

8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age

131

Process inhibitor: increasing the addiction to reward mechanisms The Internet environment continuously offers individuals a highly rewarding experience that could cause an increase compulsive reward-pushing behaviour. Reward mechanisms are becoming a powerful influence for motivation in this era. Research has proved that immediate rewards could strongly influence decision-making tasks with superficial results. Therefore, it is fundamental to moderate and counterbalance their use within a creative project, especially in activities requiring a convergent thinking mode. In recent years, there has been an increased adoption of gamified reward mechanisms (also through videogames) to increase people engagement in project activities and tasks. Research has shown that they work only for a short time on specific tasks mainly related to the divergent thinking mode. Explore stage enabler: providing opportunity and facilities for self-expression and self-discovery (Fig. 8.8) In the digital transition, people have access to sophisticated digital tools for creating digital content, sharing ideas, discussing with peers, getting feedback from experts and distributing their creations. People are not conceived as consumers anymore but

Fig. 8.8 Representation of the enabler in the engage step

132

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

rather as active creators. The digital transition places its emphasis on ‘doing’ and the active roles, where digital technologies enable us to create and share the envisioned world using prototyping tools such as video, apps, digital fabrication technologies, etc. These digital tools open new opportunities to both self-discover our own creative attitude and self-express inner feelings, ideas, passions and visions, transforming and giving shape to whatever imagination can generate. The exploration of imagination and the desirable world represent also an intrinsic motivator (Hatchuel et al. 2010) for innovators that increases the meaningfulness of the activity itself. Digital technologies become a crucial enabler of self-expression in the digital era, a factor capable of maintaining a high level of engagement and participation throughout the whole creative process. All humans are creative, but most of us have lack opportunities to find the right domain to express our inner ideas and exteriorise them through creative productions (Robinson 2010). Digital technologies can be used as creative technologies (Zagalo and Branco 2015) in the sense that they enable identifying a creative domain in which we feel more creative and develop a high level of creative self-efficacy (i.e. a person’s belief that he or she is or not creative) (Tierney and Farmer 2002) fundamental factor to enter the process and to accomplish a task with successful results. A high level of creative self-efficacy increases the risk-taking attitude in decision-making tasks. Explore stage enabler: providing opportunities and tools to access knowledge from distributed and open sources Digital technologies provide new opportunities and tools to acquire domain knowledge from an increased variety of open and distributed collective sources: from open knowledge repository and information specialists in the form of individuals or a community of experts to a broad network of diverse non-specialists through crowdsourcing. During the Clarify step, providing people with access to new, diverse information from multiple sources makes possible finding new stimulus from unexpected information while amplifying the possibilities of moments of illumination. Sharing ideas and collecting information from a variety of people with diverse multiple backgrounds who might have different ideas or perspectives is necessary to develop fresh new ideas and to stimulate analogy and imagination. However, it is fundamental to learn where to find reliable knowledge sources, how to access them and which tool to use. Large numbers of ideas and information sources, easily collected, elaborated and integrated, could speed up the process of creation. There is a vast amount of professional and amateur contents online so that anyone can learn anything just by searching video tutorials, instructables, and discussion forums. This extends the possibilities for technical support from others, especially for peer learning of some technical skills in the form of indirect collaboration through projects and tutorials.

8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age

133

Explore stage enabler: augmenting and speeding up human in exploring information and knowledge Some digital technologies enable users to collect and to analyse great amounts of data automatically generated by people, identifying patterns and providing clusters of information already interpreted. They can read and process information, create associations and comparison between elements, reaching results impossible for humans alone. For example, natural-language process tools can support humans in managing a huge amount of information, providing faster analysis of one or more broad domain of knowledge. This can support an extensive view on the state of art on a specific topic, potentially decreasing the differences between novices and experts. Acting as co-creator, they can speed up the explorative phases of the creative process, in particular, the activity within Clarify, by analysing and clustering information that a creator collects, such as research notes, interview transcripts, inspirational images etc. Understanding and knowing the creative process, combined with digital literacy, allows humans to understand how to best adopt some technologies to perform as co-creator in the creative process—for example, to unload the cognitive overload and release it for the activities that are proper to the human being and that are currently not replaceable by the machine. This strategy has to be planned, organised and defined in the process set-up activity before beginning the process. Explore stage inhibitor: augmenting the cognitive overload of information The Internet environment provides easy access to large amounts of information, causing an information overload that could blow up the Clarify step of the creative design process, weakening the ability to combine existing elements to generate a new idea or hypothesis and moves them in a novel direction in the Define step. Creativity doesn’t require a great amount of information to generate breakthrough ideas. Indeed, too much information can lead to the availability of too many ideas and perspectives to effectively screen, process and integrate. The abundance of information increases the possibility of intellectual blocks in the Define step, amplifying the inability to identify and select the most interesting and appropriate information, as well as in isolating the problem. Explore stage inhibitor: reducing deep-processing abilities The structure and nature of the online environment, in which it is very simple to move from one page to another through “hyperlinks”, result in a reduced learning effort that happens through the quick scanning of information. This could have tremendous impact on the ability to process information deeply, causing a reduction in the acquisition of knowledge and critical thinking about information. This can easily cause an intellectual block, increasing the difficulties in isolating the problem in the first two steps of the process. The shallow mode of learning is also connected to a reduction in long-term memory which could have repercussions on the development of the individual

134

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

culture and on the process of memory retrieval important for the quality and the originality of ideas and projects. Fostering intellectual curiosity and observation is fundamental to enable a person to go behind the exploration of information from multiple sources, not only through search engines, supporting deep-reading skills. Generate stage enabler: adopting a virtual and digital identity Adopting a virtual identity in the convergent moment of Ideate step makes possible to decrease the risk of idea evaluation and reputation that sometimes block the individual thinker from interacting and sharing/generating ideas with others or within a team. The virtual environment can also support an easy shifting of personalities by make it possible to assume alternative roles, such as avatar with superpower or with non-realistic traits, adopting new perspectives when generating ideas or thinking about a problem. This helps our mind to diverge and to generate ideas with a different perspective. Because shifting personalities is also a game mechanism, therefore, it is automatically perceived as a playful activity. Adopting a virtual personality helps shy people in sharing or generating thoughts and ideas with others. Generate stage enabler: interacting with inspiring digital contents, ideas and projects Reading and interacting with successful projects can support the identification of new opportunities and represents also inspiration for the generation of new ideas and visions facilitating the conceptual combination factor and our openness. Sources such as Instagram or Pinterest constitutes online sources of images inspiration for our imagination processes, as well as for analogic thinking and lateral thinking, to which we are exposed every day and that can provide inspiration for transforming and externalising our mental images. The number of ideas and projects, tutorials, memes, presented in multiple shapes in the Internet environment and other digitally native creative forms that are powerful examples of the human combinatorial nature can constitute a positive motivational stimulus throughout the whole process. Generate stage enabler: collaborating at a distance in virtual spaces The individual creativity-relevant processes, such as analogic thinking, memory retrieval, imagination, etc., can be empowered when collaborating with others in a digital environment because most of digital tools allow us to keep track of the ideas and information shared, thus increasing self-reflection. Digital technologies can also automatically recognise the topic under discussion and automatically provide inspiration to improve creativity-relevant processes in the Ideate step. For example, electronic brainstorming through a chat system can better support individuals to overhear other people’s ideas and build new ideas out of them. It also allows to connect human minds to each other in new ways and on unprecedented scales. Brainstorming with a large number of people produces a larger number of ideas and consequently idea diversity. Research has proved that large numbers of people

8.4 Mapping Creativity Enablers and Inhibitors in the Digital Age

135

involved in a brainstorming (more than 50) can generate more diversity in the ideas generated, leading to an greater possibility of original results. An increased development and diffusion of digital platforms enables the possibilities for a collaborative team to brainstorm ideas, co-create solution, collaborate and work together on projects also at a distance and without time limitations. Moreover, the use of virtual environment rooms for idea generation with a team of people who are physically distant, but virtually co-localized by their avatars, improve: the feeling of working closely with others, the experience of a shared place as opposed to just sharing any ordinary space; this augments the immersiveness of the experience and improves creative interaction. Generate stage enabler: boosting human-creativity flow Some digital technologies are able to reproduce human cognitive processes that support the production of creative ideas. For example, they could support humans in the Ideate step to see lateral connections, exploring and speeding up the process of thinking in analogies, expanding the amount of contents and connections generated by the process itself and reaching peak performances of the creative process and a flow mental state. The information and stimulus provided by this system in diverse ways can be used as a jump-starter in the Ideate step of the creative design process. They could support a creative exploration of information and could help people to imagine unfamiliar concepts and novel design idea. Generate stage enabler: augmenting and speeding up humans in externalising ideas and concepts Understanding and knowing the creative process, combined with digital literacy, allows humans to understand how to best adopt some technologies to perform as co-creator in the creative process, for example, to unload the cognitive overload and release it for the activities that are proper to the human being and that are currently not replaceable by machines. This strategy has to be planned, organised and defined in the process set-up activity before beginning the process. In the generative phase of the process, complex algorithms run by a machine can automatically combine information to externalise millions of alternative solutions that can both inspire humans and provide concepts and solutions impossible for human to achieve. An example is generative design which enables prototyping complex structures not generable by humans alone. The externalisation can benefit also the Define and Ideate steps of the process since it allows to iterate and improve their output.

8.5

Guidelines to Adopt the Framework for Creative Empowerment

The Creativity 4.0 Framework constitutes a tool to analyse the influence of the digital transition on the multiple aspects of the design process, as well as to define design actions and tools to empower creative abilities to develop innovative ideas.

136

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

A fundamental dimension of a designer’s ability and mindset is the synthesis of new possibilities and the search for novel original solutions to challenges (Cross 2011). Understanding creativity and how to enhance creative performance is therefore of great importance to the design disciplines, especially in the digital age where design become a strategic tool and approach to guide the adoption and the development of new disruptive technologies. Therefore, the framework becomes a paramount reference for developing methods, activities and design actions for training creativity skills and developing a strategic creative approach to solve challenges and mastering the development of new disruptive technologies. The basic structure of the Creativity 4.0 Framework that defines the stages and steps of the process, the activities and the various creativity factors mapped on each step, makes possible having a knowledge of the cognitive, emotional, motivational and social mechanisms that intervene in the design process. This mapping represents a first layer of knowledge and the configuration that can be adopted to develop training modules to enhance and train the single factors and the five human components of digital creativity or to the entire process in order to enhance the creative skills of an individual. A complete creative training program would seek to enhance all components and factors involved in creativity and can be tailored to each person after determining which components are not at an individual’s optimal level. Guidelines can be developed also to support people in training on how to best use the componential resources that they have. People can learn to use certain factors during one step of the process and others during a later step of the process. In some cases, creative performance can also be enhanced by matching people with tasks to maximise the fit between a person’s componential profile and the factors that a task requires. It is fundamental to know that a particular creativity training program may have diverse effects because people start with different componential profiles and because the factors may interact with each other. Thus, enhancing one factor (e.g. acquiring domain-relevant knowledge) may in turn affect another factor (e.g. risk-taking or motivation). The mapping of the enablers and inhibitors on the framework adds a second layer of knowledge that highlights which phases and activities of the process are most affected by the ongoing digital transition and how. In particular, some of the recorded influences are related to changes in the way of thinking and acting of the human being due to a diffusion and democratisation of technological tools. In this case, the framework represents an opportunity to understand what factors and steps are mostly inhibit by the digital transition and define actions to counteract its negative influence. On the other hand, some influences are closely linked to the use of certain technological tools/application. Therefore, in this case the framework presents the opportunities to adopt digital technology to support and augment human creative abilities in the design process to achieve results beyond human capabilities.

8.5 Guidelines to Adopt the Framework for Creative Empowerment

137

In both cases, this second mapping allows having the necessary knowledge and the configuration to empower creativity in the design process by defining actions and methods either using digital technologies or not. These actions can be addressed to design practice, education and research and could provide tips and best practice that address the different needs of these three fields. For example, from the analysis explained in Chap. 6, it emerged how one of the fundamental roles of designers in the digital era is to guide and design the creative process of digital technologies for enhancing human creativity. Designers will increasingly find themselves to design human–machine collaboration processes allowing people to achieve results they had never imagined before. The new active digital technologies, become human co-creators, supporting people in generating multiple and unexpected solutions, but requiring a new kind of thinking and new skills. In this case, the framework can be used as a guide to provide designers with a deep understanding about the opportunities of using digital technologies to co-create with humans and to design on one side the machine creative process and on the other side to integrate it within the human creative process. The influences mapped on the framework can also be overlaid to achieve a stronger empowerment within the same design phase. Others require further levels of investigation through the definition of applicative research projects with field experimentation. The framework represents therefore a codified language to support the fundamental dialogue needed between the various different disciplines interested in studying Digital Creativity. This domain indeed requires the intervention and the active cooperation of various disciplines in order to structure new knowledge. The framework indeed represents a first effort to bring together such knowledge, and it could for sure be expanded with an active cooperation of all the different disciplines. This represents one of the main aspects to consider for future implementation and development.

References Amabile, T.M.: The social psychology of creativity: a componential conceptualization. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 45(2), 357 (1983) Amabile, T.M.: Componential theory of creativity. Harvard Business School Working paper, No. 12-096 (2012) Amabile, T.M., Pratt, M.G.: The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: making progress, making meaning. Res. Organiz. Beh. 36, 157–183 (2016) Bonnardel, N., Wojtczuk, A., Gilles, P.-Y., Mazon, S.: The creative process in design. In Lubart, T. (ed.), The Creative Process. Perspectives from Multiple Domains, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, London, 229–254 (2018) Carrier, L.M., Rosen, L.D., Cheever, N.A., Lim, A.F.: Causes, effects, and practicalities of everyday multitasking. Dev. Rev. 35, 64–78 (2015) Corazza, G.E., Agnoli, S.: On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans. In: MCCSIS Conference 2015 Proceedings, Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (2015)

138

8 Creativity 4.0 Framework: A Design Framework …

Cross, N.: Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. Berg Publishers, Oxford (2011) Design Council.: Eleven Lessons: Managing Design in Eleven Global Companies-Desk Research Report. Design Council (2007). Retrieved from www.designcouncil.org.uk Dubberly, H.: How Do You Design. A Compendium of Models. Dubberly Design Office (2004) Fredrickson, B.: What good are positive emotions?, Rev. Gen. Psych. 300–319 (1998) Hatchuel, A., Starkey, K., Tempest, S., Le Masson, P.: Strategy as innovative design: an emerging perspective. Adv. Strateg. Manag. 27(1), 3–28 (2010) IDEActivity.: Co-design in the DiDIY scenario. Toolkit and guidelines (2017). Retrieved from http://www.ideactivity.polimi.it/toolkits/ IDEActivity.: IDEActivity Toolkit (2014). Retrieved from https://www.ideactivity.polimi.it/it/ ideactivitytoolkit/ Isaksen, S.G., Dorval, K.B., Treffinger, D.J.: Creative Approaches to Problem Solving: A Framework for Change, 2nd edn. Creative Problem Solving Group, Buffalo, NY (2000) Isen, A.: On the relationship between affect and creative problem solving. In S. Ruaa (Ed.), Affect, creative experience and psychological adjustment, Brunner/Mazel,Philadelphia, 3–18 (1999a) Isen, A.: Positive affect. In T. Dagleish, M. Power (Eds.), Handbook of cognition and emotion, Wiley & Sons, New York 521–539 (1999b) Loh, K.K., Kanai, R.: How has the internet reshaped human cognition? Neuroscientist 22(5), 506–520 (2016) Malone, T.W.: Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together. Little, Brown (2018) McCullough, M.: Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. MIT Press (1998) Meinel, C., Leifer, L.: Design thinking research. Design thinking: understand–improve–apply. Springer, Heidelberg (2010) Mendel, J.: A taxonomy of models used in the design process. Interactions 19(1), 81–85 (2012) Michel, R.: Design Research Now. Essays and Selected Projects, London (2007) Moos, D.C., Marroquin, E.: Multimedia, hypermedia, and hypertext: motivation considered and reconsidered. Comput. Hum. Behav. 26, 265–276 (2010) Mothersill, P., Bove Jr, V. M.: Humans, machines and the design process. Exploring the role of computation in the early phases of creation. Des. J. 20(sup1), S3899–S3913 (2017) Mothersill, P., Bove, V.M.: An Ontology of Computational Tools for Design Activities (2018) Robinson, K.: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Viking Adult, New York (2010) Rosen, L.D., Lim, A.F., Carrier, L.M.: An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: educational implications and strategies too enhance learning. Psicologia Educativa 17(2), 163–177 (2011) Sawyer, R.K.: Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. University Press, Oxford (2012) Shapiro, A., Niederhauser, D.: Learning from hypertext: research issues and findings. In: Jonassen, D.H. (ed.) Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 2nd edn., pp. 605–620. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ (2004) Simon, H.: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, vol. 80, pp. 4569–4571 (1983) Tassoul, M., Buijs, J.: Clustering: an essential step from diverging to converging. Creat. Innov. Manag. 16(1), 16–26 (2007) Tierney, P.A., Farmer, S.M.: Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance. Acad. Manag. J. 45(6), 1137–1148 (2002) Wallas G.: The Art of Thought, First Ed. 1926. Solis Press (2014) Wynn, D., Clarkson, J.: Models of designing. In: Design Process Improvement, pp. 34–59. Springer, London (2005) Zagalo, N., Branco, P.: Creativity in the Digital Age. Springer-Verlag, London (2015)

Chapter 9

The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

9.1

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, a new design discipline is emerging in response to changes in the economic, cultural, and social environments. Public and private institutions are increasingly facing more complex and ambiguous issues mainly due to the increased diffusion of digital technologies and, as a consequence, there is a growing desire among designers to tackle society’s most pressing problems. The design process and the creative factors become a means to enable a wide range of disciplines and stakeholders to collaborate, as well as powerful tools to empower people and companies to strategically face the complexity of this era. The new design practice requires designers to work in a very different way and to acquire and develop particular sets of both soft and hard skills and methods. The role and the skills of the designers are indeed changing and evolving in these times, and the impact upon design education will be significant. The curriculum needs to be updated to prepare future designers to the new design discipline and practices. This last chapter introduces a human-centred method developed, as a result of the entire research, to support the design discipline in updating its processes and tools for empowering humans in the digital era. It sparks reflections on how design research and practice can contribute to the contemporary debate on digital transformation by introducing a method to empower and transform people with creativity and design skills. The complexity and the evolution of creativity in a transitional era, studied by multiple and non-communicating disciplines, required a transdisciplinary exploration of creativity that encompasses the various different perspectives adopted for its study. This exploration has been done and presented in the previous chapters of the book to show the relevant role of design researchers in creatively exploring different disciplines in a structured way, thus integrating existing knowledge to create new ones. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8_9

139

140

9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

The analysis presented contributes to formalize a Creativity 4.0 Human-Centred method, where the model and framework become the fundamental tools to guide a wiser and more conscious application of the digital opportunities that are addressed to human creative enhancement for innovation. These tools support a continuous exploration of the digital influences on the creative abilities within the design process to design training methods and activities that facilitate and support the emotional, motivational, cognitive and social factors of the designers to intervene in the creative design process, as well as the process itself.

9.2

Reflections on the Developed Tools

The current scenario of digital transition is impacting several aspects of the human designers, from the inner cognitive level to the outer social interaction with others, thus influencing their creative potential, requiring new skills for the creative activities and providing new opportunities to empower the creative design process. The tools presented in the previous chapters help in understanding the impact of the digital transition on human beings and on their creativity factors to develop actions to empower the creative design process. Indeed, the model recognizes three main levels of the human being involved in a creative activity that could be impacted by the ongoing digital transition: the cognitive level that includes the intellectual and cognitive processes of acquisition of knowledge; the individual level that includes the behavioural and affective dimension, and the social level referring to communication and collaboration with other individuals. The main aim of the model is to guide a structured exploration in the Digital Creativity domain to identify some positive and negative changes brought by the digital transition on the factors of creativity and the individual creative potential, with a human-centric approach, providing also the structure to organize such knowledge. The Creativity 4.0 model, comprising as theoretical structures of hypotheses, describes the phenomenon of creativity in the digital transition, connecting theoretical research, case studies and dialogues with experts, while also providing a visualization. It gives a direction to the research, becoming a useful tool to read, organize, analyse and interpret the digital transition and provide a way to study creativity in the present age, strongly dependent on the evolution of the human being. The definition of the model makes possible to demonstrate that the digital transition is having an impact on the human being at different levels, highlighting an ongoing generational change driven by a co-evolution between humans and digital technologies. In this co-evolution, creativity becomes a fundamental human ability that has to be developed and trained through a deep understanding and practice of the creative process, as well as through the development of skills, attitudes, cognitive processes and enhancing emotional, motivational and social factors.

9.2 Reflections on the Developed Tools

141

Indeed, the definition of the model supports the integration and the analysis of the relevant human factors of creativity on the three levels and the exploration of the positive and negative influences brought by the digital transition. The boundaries between the three levels are often blurred, and the allocation of the elements and factors may be challenging, as well as the identification of the impacts on the three levels. However, acknowledging their existence and close interaction facilitates the comprehension of the complexity and multifarious aspects of both the human beings and their creativity skill, better enabling one to understand and identify the changing conditions brought by the digital transition. Therefore, the model takes into account a multiple-component perspective and examines the relative importance of the different constituents in predicting creativity that, according to Batey and Furnham (2006), is what future studies of creativity should do. The ever-changing digital scenario will constantly require a deep understanding of the technological, social and cultural opportunities that could influence and enhance creativity. The Creativity 4.0 model could support the continuous exploration even, and especially, when the digital technology evolves because it constitutes the foundation from which the model is feeding, and which requires continuous observation. It represents therefore the tool that allows us to identify the fundamental influences of creativity for continually supporting creative enhancement. Prensky (2009, p. 7) purports that: “Being digitally wise involves not only enhancing our natural capabilities with existing technologies but also continuously identifying additional areas where our natural human tools—even when they are developed to a very high level—cannot do the job unaided. […] They investigate and evaluate the positives as well as the negatives of new tools and figure out how to strike the balance that turns tools into wisdom enhancers. The digitally wise also realize that the ability to control digital technology, to bend it to their needs, is a key skill in the digital age. As a result, they are interested in programming, in the broadest sense of the word, that is, in making machines do what people want them to do.” Through using the model, it is therefore possible to analyse also a specific digital technology to understand its positive and negative influences and explore additional opportunities for enhancement. It is a tool that support humans in becoming wiser regarding the use of digital technology. Both the factor analysis and the identification of the influences through the model become strategic for design when compared to the design process in order to inform the opportunities to empower the human creative potential within the design process by exploiting the potential of digital technologies. Therefore, a second tool, i.e., the Creativity 4.0 Framework, has been built. The framework based on a design process deconstructed into steps, activities and relevant human creativity factors integrates the creativity thinking style into the various stages of the design process. Firstly, the motivational, cognitive, emotional and social factors of creativity have been mapped on the various steps of the design

142

9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

process to support a second mapping of the identified influences, which highlights their effect on the factors and the activities of the design process. The framework represents a codified language to support the fundamental dialogue needed between the different disciplines interested in studying Digital Creativity. This domain indeed requires the intervention and the active cooperation of multiple disciplines in order to structure new knowledge. The framework indeed represents a first effort to bring together such knowledge, and it could be implemented and enriched with the active cooperation of all the different disciplines. In particular, the framework supports the definition of action to empower the creative design process by exploiting the opportunities provided by the digital transition. The developed model and framework represent the knowledge for the definition of a Human Centred Design method that could support empowering design and creativity skills, as discussed in the next subsection. The method aims to benefit design research, education and practice supporting them in understanding the ongoing human transformation and in making a wiser and consciously use of digital opportunities addressed to human creative enhancement for innovation.

9.3

Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity

The research undertaken and the results obtained make possible forming a wealth of knowledge and building a scientific path for the exploration of the influences and opportunities that technological evolution is bringing to creativity in the design process. This path can be formalized in a scientific method that allows the continuous exploration of the influences on creativity in the design process, even as human and digital technology will continue to co-evolve. The Human-Centred Method aims at empowering creativity to generate innovation by exploiting the opportunities provided by the digital evolution and the potentialities offered by the emerging digital technologies. The method involves the application of the results obtained from research in a scientific and systematic way. It is structured according to four main steps in which the Creativity 4.0 Model and Framework become the fundamental tools that guide each step. To better understand the proposed method, a type of identikit using the 5 W+H framework has been created. What is the power of the method? The Human-Centred Design Method for empowering creativity in the digital age has the main aim of exploring the changes and opportunities of the digital evolution for augmenting human creativity, empowering the design processes for innovation in various contexts of application and putting people at the centre of the change. The method, through the application of the model and the framework, facilitates and supports the emotional, motivational, cognitive and social factors of the human being that intervene in the creative design process, as well as the process itself.

9.3 Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity

143

These factors are the levers to be activated and enhanced to enable humans to express their maximum creative potentials. The Creativity 4.0 Model and Framework are the two fundamental tools to apply the method. The model is the useful tool to continually monitor how the digital transition is influencing the cognitive, emotional and social factors of the digitally enhanced generation responsible for performing creatively. The model analyses the changes and feeds the framework, even when totally new disruptive technologies emerge. The framework has been developed to understand how the influences can empower the production of new, original and useful ideas through a design process. The framework’s strength lies in having systematized the knowledge on creativity from different disciplines, i.e. design, psychology, sociology and computer science, providing an overview of the main factors of creativity on which the digital transition has an influence. Not just that. The framework informs on how the numerous factors intervene in the creative design process, highlighting also how the changes brought by the digital transition can influence them. The power of the method relies therefore on the definition of the model and the framework. These tools comprise the fundamental knowledge needed for design actions to empower creativity abilities in the digital age, exploiting the opportunities provided by the digital transition and the digital technologies. The method therefore represents a guide for wiser and more conscious design and the adoption of digital technologies or digital tools to enhance and stimulate human creativity abilities. Why adopts the method? Through the application of the method, it is possible to investigate how to augment human creativity to achieve innovation by exploiting the opportunities provided by the digital transition. The method can support the empowerment of creativity through design in multiple ways (Fig. 9.1). On one side, the method supports empowering the creative design process by: (i) studying the influences of a specific digital technology on the creative design process to define and apply new processes for designing with those specific digital technologies; (ii) empowering and strengthening the comprehension of the overall creativity in the design process to develop or update training modules to enhance design and creative skills for the new digitally enhanced generation; (iii) empowering the understanding of the mechanisms behind the creative expression in order to strengthen human factors within the creative process of individual and/or collaborative design aimed at innovation. Taking into account the individual’s well-being allows to improve the level of innovation of the ideas generated. This could result in the development of digital design and creativity tools for supporting designers and non-designers in boosting their creative abilities. They could inspire cognitive processes and speed up design activities, or they can augment human physical and cognitive capabilities. Emerging technology

144

9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

allow humans to establish a conversation with tools that inspire us and provoke us to dig deeper and to link things in new ways that we haven’t considered before. On the other side, the method supports consciously driving the technological evolution and empowering innovation thorough digital technology, putting technology at the service of human needs. The method experiments with, implements and adopts the new emerging digital technologies in a conscious way in order to strengthen human factors within the individual and/or collaborative creative design process aimed at innovation. How to apply the method? The Creativity 4.0 method is structured according to four main steps where the model and the framework become operational tools that guide each step as follow (Fig. 9.2): Step1_Observe: The Model, in its static version, guides the observation of the impacts that could affect the human being, as well as in the observation of how technologies can support the creative process. Step 2_Understand: The Model in its dynamic version makes possible understanding how the impacts identified, as well as the technologies observed, could influence the creativity factors and therefore the human creative abilities. Step 3_Map: In this step, the Framework become the guiding tool. It enables one to see the effects on the design process and to define actions to empower creativity through the design process. Step 4_Design: This represents the active step in which the identified and defined action is designed and implemented. It may refer to new tools, processes or activities to enhance single steps or the whole creative design process. Two possible approaches for using the model have been identified and defined with respect to the research and analysis carried out. They represent different starting points for the application of the knowledge integrated in the model and the framework. The first approach, defined as Technology-driven, is based on the application and experimentation of the potentialities of a certain technology as a powerful source of competitive advantage. The first step for this approach is fundamental to deeply understand, through the model, what are the potentialities of the technology under investigation and in what ways it can support the creative process, identifying its main and powerful roles and opportunities that strictly depend on the nature of the technology itself. Consequently, by consulting the framework, it is possible to identify a specific action in relation to the creative design process and the factors of creativity that are mostly affected by that technology and to understand what are the opportunities for creative enhancement. The second approach, defined as Creativity-driven, is based on the willingness to enhance the creative potential of individuals to improve their performances in specific moments of the creative design process through digital technologies.

9.3 Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity

145

Fig. 9.1 Two ways with which the method can empower creativity

Fig. 9.2 How to use the model and the framework through the method

Improving the performance means speed up the activities, inspiring or augmenting the cognitive capabilities of the creator, connecting individual socially, improving co-creation and communication within a team. In the first step of this approach, it is fundamental to deeply understand and select through the framework which step/activity of the process to support, what are the factors on which to intervene and what opportunities the digital transition offer to enhance it. Consequently, with the specific goal in mind, is it possible to consult the model to identify new opportunities for empowerment and eventually to select

146

9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

the specific digital technology that can properly answer to that, and enable one to achieve great results. Where and when to apply the method? The method can be applied in the field of design education, design research and design practice, generating various possibilities for action toward the enhancement of human creativity within the design process. The method can be adopted in different ways to address various issues according to the related field of action. In design education, for example, it can be adopted to develop or update teaching modules to enhance the creative skills of the new digitally enhanced generation of designers. In design research, it can be adopted to study the influence of a particular emerging digital technology on the design process to identify innovative processes for design with that technology. In design practice, it can be pursued to develop new digital design tools for supporting designers and non-designers in boosting their creative abilities, speeding up some process activities. Who needs to apply the method? Considering the complexity of the knowledge involved, the method could require the presence of three main domain for its application: psychology, design and the engineer. Their knowledge can be useful at various moments and steps of the method. Cognitive psychology skills and a deep knowledge of creativity studies, are fundamental to better understand the factors of creativity, highlighting their nature and their mutual influences in order to be able to enhance it through digital means. Design skills are fundamental for the deep knowledge of the nature of the design process and activities and for the competences on the human-centred approach, as well as for the design of possible tools and actions that concretely put the psychological knowledge into practice. Engineering skills are fundamental for the deep knowledge on the potentialities of the different types of disruptive and emerging digital technologies, as well as for the technical skills of programming language and algorithm generation. The framework and the model are tools that aim to interweave the research in creativity with knowledge produced within the computer-science domain (and particularly within Human–Computer Interaction), providing a kind of universal language that can be common and shared among the three disciplines. It therefore enables establishing a dialogue between them, one not yet existing but necessary to investigate a multidisciplinary phenomenon such as Digital Creativity. Application case In this subsection, the method is applied with a Technology-driven approach to deeply explore and investigate the influences of a specific digital technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), on creativity within the design process.

9.3 Defining a Method for Empowering Human Creativity

147

Starting from Observing (Step1), understanding the potentialities of AI and how it can support the creative process can be reached by collecting research projects, cases and best practice that uses AI to enhance the creative process in its positive and negative aspects. For example, from a deep investigation of the literature, it emerges that AI can be used as a co-creator within the creative process, supporting humans in speeding up and amplifying activities and tasks in specific moment of the process. AI can also be used as a feeding partner, able of reproducing human cognitive processes to feed human thinking with inspiring divergent information. Consequently, in a second step, it is fundamental to analyse the cases through the lens of the factors of creativity while trying to understand in which part of the process AI can perform best as a partner. One of the main recognized potentialities, as co-creator, is that it helps to accelerate research and discovery by freeing people from repetitive tasks, empowering teams to focus on more creative, higher-value work. Since its declared function is accelerating discovery and research, one of the opportunities identified is that AI could support augmenting and speeding up humans in exploring information and knowledge. Therefore, the most fruitful moment to employ AI could be in the explorative stage of the process. At this point, is important to map this opportunity onto the framework to specifically identify which steps or activities within the process can be influenced by the adoption of AI as a co-creator partner to augment and speed up in the exploration of information and knowledge. It emerges that AI can have a fundamental role in managing a huge amount of data and information—by analysing and interpreting them. The computational technology can support humans to expand their initial information, speed up the analysis of large amounts of information, identify and make associations through information from different contexts of exploration and quickly identify both expected and unexpected findings. In this case, the human partner will have the important role of analysing the result provided by the machine, generating hypotheses and identify novel directions. An important reflection emerges regarding the changing role of the designer who becomes the facilitator of the process and the designer of the process that allows the machine to contribute and co-create. From this analysis, there emerges a hypothesis of action that goes in the direction of empowering creativity, addressing the design practice. From the analysis, it also emerges that the system could support the designers in the earlier steps of exploration and interpretation of the information. Indeed, during the process, the cognitive system becomes a knowledgeable expert on the specific topic. By reproducing the learning and synthesis processes of a human being, it amplifies and extends the human cognitive potential to provide meaning and insight from a vast mass of unstructured data and information (i.e. specific information about materials, forms and design elements to be transferred to the final product) that would have taken a great deal of time to be performed by a human. Moreover, AI can discover unusual details that help shape the designer’s creative vision. Therefore, for the design practice, it could be constructive to develop a design tool based on AI, Natural Language and Visual Recognition tools, that acting as co-creator could analyse and clusters all the information that a designer collects on a

148

9 The Role of Design in a Transitional Era

specific domain and the information on the field such as research notes, interview transcripts, inspirational images and so forth. This tool will speed up the explorative phases of the design process and support the designers in extracting meaning and insights out of that vast mass of information to facilitate the generation of alternative hypotheses and strategic thinking.

9.4

People Transformation Towards Digital Maturity

Digital Maturity is about people, talent, and strategy, not technology. The ability to adapt to an increasingly digital future depends on developing the next-generation set of abilities among which creativity factors stands out. The creative aspect of innovation is entirely dependent on people and on their skills to pair with and make the most out of digital technologies. When leaders and companies think about investing in new emerging technology, they should first think about investing in the people who can make that technology useful. Indeed, one of the main obstacles to digital development initiatives is the identification of adequate digital talent who have the right skills to manage digital innovations. By 2025, at least 50% of company employees will need to have digital skills as well as human skills such as complex problem solving, strategic and creative thinking, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, communication and negotiation, relationship and network building abilities (WEF 2020). This set of fundamental skills corresponds to the cognitive, emotional, motivational and social factors of creativity that represent the levers to be activated and enhanced to enable individuals and teams to express their maximum creative potential. Leading the transformation and fostering the upgrade of such set of skills is, therefore, a fundamental requirement for digital transformation and for post-pandemic economic recovery in all sectors, as also proposed by the Reskilling Revolution.1 Their development and empowerment make possible managing the digital transition to achieve a Digital Maturity (De Vreede et al. 2017) that means enabling people to continuously adapt to a changing digital landscape, learning how to collaborate with digital technologies and how to use them to serve human needs in any field. The factors of creativity become the nourishment for designers that have gained an important role in transforming people skills enabling them to reach Digital Maturity. The design discipline has a primary role in transforming the skills of people and companies’ human capital, empowering them to activate and express their creative

1

Reskilling Revolution initiative aims to provide one billion people with better education, skills and jobs by 2030 https://widgets.weforum.org/reskillingrevolution/index.html.

9.4 People Transformation Towards Digital Maturity

149

potential, to think and act in a non-predictable digital world. The role of current and future designers should be to enhance and facilitate the creative abilities of another generation of people, to guide the technological development addressing new digital challenges, generating positive implications in the world and achieving large-scale innovation. Therefore, the main objective of a design researcher is to train and empower the individual creative process and the ingredients that improve the individual performance within the creative process to obtain winning results. This contribution has been incorporated into the definition of a Human-Centred Method aimed at empowering creativity to generate innovation by exploiting the opportunities and potentialities of the emerging digital technologies. The design discipline should prepare the next digital generation of designers and provide new creativity-driven design tools that will form the future designer toolbox for digital maturity. Therefore, the method aims to benefit design research, education and practice, while supporting them in understanding the ongoing human transformation and in making a wiser and more conscious use of digital opportunities addressed to human creative enhancement for innovation. Training and guiding the development of creative skills to manage the digital transition strategically and maturely with an approach centred on people's needs is a fundamental requirement in this complex digital transformation and the focus on which the Creativity 4.0 method presented in this chapter, is based.

References Batey, M., Furnham, A.: Creativity, intelligence and personality: a critical review of the scattered literature. Genet. Soc. Gen. Psychol. Monogr. 132(4), 355–429 (2006) De Vreede, T., Boughzala, I., De Vreede, G.J., Reiter-Palmon, R.: The team creativity model: an exploratory case study. J. Midwest Assoc. Inf. Syst. 1, 19 (2017) Prensky, M.: H. sapiens digital: from digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Innov. J. Online Educ. 5(3), 1–9 (2009) World Economic Forum.: The future of jobs report 2020, Geneva, Switzerland, p. 163 (October 2020). Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf. Last access 10 Feb 2021

Conclusion

The rapid technological evolution in our century, in continuous acceleration, has led to an unprecedented transformation of the social and cultural fabric. Human beings have undergone critical cognitive, behavioral, and social changes. Even the tools we use to carry out daily operations, which are increasingly digital, require people to have new skills, a new digital mindset, and a greater awareness of the actions they perform and their implications for others. These evolutionary changes are addressed in detail in the first part of the book, which put the human being at the centre of the digital transition to analyse the main differences and impacts that can influence people’s creative potential and their ability to create and generate innovation. With the emergence of disruptive cognitive technologies, devices that connect us with people worldwide, and ubiquitous digital technologies increasingly within everyone’s reach, creativity is evolving too. It adapts to its new surroundings and takes on a new form, namely, Digital Creativity, that needs to be studied by the design discipline. The second part of the book is indeed dedicated to exploring Digital Creativity from the perspective of design to better understand its forms, changes, and potential. From this analysis, two crucial deductions that revolve around the nature of Digital Creativity emerge. They also represent the two different points of view from which design can interact with this domain. On the one hand, design can refer to Digital Creativity as the ability to creatively and strategically apply digital technologies to innovate, thereby harnessing technological innovation to solve complex problems while keeping people at the centre. This ability requires humans to manage a creative design process and develop new factors of creativity, including the ability to manage information abundance, communicate and collaborate with others to solve complex problems, and the ability to understand the cultural and social potential of emerging digital technologies. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Bruno, Creativity in the Design Process, Springer Series in Design and Innovation 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87258-8

151

152

Conclusion

On the other hand, design can refer to Digital Creativity as the ability to benefit from digital technologies to enhance our way of creating, i.e., our creative process, to increase human creativity. To provide a well-known example, artificial intelligence, being a cognitive technology, can play the role of co-creator in the creative process, helping humans read and analyse a large amount of data, enriching and speeding up the exploratory phase of the design process. To this end, it is fundamental to know all the mechanisms and factors behind human creativity to see how they can be stimulated and augmented through digital technology. So, why is it important for design research to study the new forms of digital creativity? The answer is closely linked to the role of designers in the digital evolution and the importance of its methods, tools, and mindset in guiding technological development and application. The “double-disruption” of the economic impacts of the pandemic and the adoption of technology advances, is rapidly transforming work. At least 133 million new roles may emerge globally because of the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms. This division will require people to develop new digital skills (e.g., information skills, programming and app development) and human skills (i.e. critical thinking, resilience, complex problem solving, etc.) that computers can’t easily master.1 Designers are increasingly called upon to be facilitators of creative and collaborative processes to generate innovation and support companies’ digital transformations. Therefore, it is essential to know the new digitally enhanced skills and mindset to guide and facilitate the human creative processes in the best possible way and increase the creative potential of people by working on creativity factors. Future designers and engineers should support companies during the digital transition, achieving a Digital Maturity that requires adjusting and implementing the entire organization, including human capital, to continuously adapt to an evolving digital landscape. Therefore, the nurture and development of such skills of future professionals is becoming a compulsory step for design and engineering education. The Creativity 4.0 methods, with the framework and the model, developed through the research and presented in the third section of the book, aim to support creating new formats and tools for enhancing Digital Creativity. Indeed, they started out as purely theoretical tools and have become the core knowledge of the Erasmus + project, “Digital Creativity for Developing Digital Maturity Future Skills”,2 intended to enhance young generation digital creativity skills to become Digital Maturity talents. Indeed, Digital Creativity empowerment is intrinsic and transversal to the five key abilities that companies seek to become digitally mature. They are: (a) the ability to collaborate in cross-functional design teams; (b) the ability to innovate,

1

Declared by the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition launched by the European Commission. www.dc4dm.eu.

2

Conclusion

153

having digitally-minded cultures, visions, and experiences; (c) a continuous learning ability creating enjoyable learning environments; (d) the ability to scale small digital experiments into wider initiatives that have business impact; and (e) the ability to plan a long-term vision/strategy to meet the challenges emerging in the digital landscape (Kane 2017). The project aims to implement and spread a new scenario of cross-functional teams’ education for training future professionals to face the complex real-world challenges brought by the digital transformation. The project adopts an open-learning approach based on real-world challenges to train digital creativity fostering the sharing of cross-cultural knowledge from academia to industry and vice versa. The DC4DM project main result will be an Educational Box, developed within a EU network of universities, SMEs and startups, and business incubators, addressed to design and engineer education, including new open educational resources to enable the five key abilities that lead to the increase of the peoples’ digital maturity level. The operative application of the model and its tools facilitate and enhance the cognitive, emotional and social skills that intervene in the creative design process to empower the generation of innovative technological ideas/solutions through a design approach and mindset. The project supports opportunities for all in acquiring and developing key competencies, especially the transversal skill needed in the fast-changing world, such as an entrepreneurial mindset, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, digital literacy, among others, to foster employability and socio-educational and personal development, as well as participation in civic and social life. This digital transition calls for new ways of designing that are based upon a deep understanding of how to design for change and the new skillsets required from areas such as science, philosophy, psychology, social science, anthropology, engineering, and the humanities. A transitional and transdisciplinary designer is able to interconnect social, economic, political, and natural systems to address problems at all levels of the spatiotemporal scale, enabling people to improve their quality of life and make better decisions. Therefore, in this transitional century, design emerges as a relevant discipline with the key role of transforming people and empowering their skills to support a societal transition to a wiser digital and sustainable future.

Reference Kane, C.: Digital Maturity, Not Digital Transformation. MIT Sloan Management Review (April 2017). Retrieved from https://sloanreview.mit.edu