Supporting creative and reflective processes

Creativity has long been seen as a mysterious process. A better understanding of the nature of creativity and the processes that underpin it are needed in order to be able to make contributions to the design of creativity support tools. In this paper, current theories of creativity and models of the creative process are discussed and an empirical study outlined of participants individually and collaboratively undertaking two creative tasks in different domains. The tasks ‘write a poem’ and ‘design a poster’ were carried out via two media; pen and paper and with the use of a computer and software tools. Schön's theory of reflection-in-action is applied to the study results. The research has generated software requirements for tools to support these specific creative tasks, and also initial design features to enable support for group reflection of evolving creative artefacts.