Hello, I'm Kate Belakova,
and with my co-author Wendy Mackay, we're going to present your research based
on my master's thesis in a research lab in Paris.
So we were interested in the creativity support tool to inspire writers while
explicitly avoiding interference with their creative flow.
There is evidence that showing
that different environmental stimuli, for example, material light and smell,
can either foster or diminish creative thinking.
For example, writers become more alert
with a smell of a coffee and are more creative in a dim light.
This is why we were interested in creativity, support tools beyond
the desktop to take advantage of user's
other senses. Tangible and embodied interaction,
offer a captivating approach with a more natural way of responding to the user's
actions and blending into the writer's existing routines.
So we asked two key research questions
and did 3 qualitative studies to explore them.
First question: how professional creative writers actually write,
including their daily routines, environment and sources of inspiration.
What are their self motivation techniques and strategies for maintaining focus?
Second,
can tangible artifacts fit naturally into the author's existing writing process
supporting creativity without interrupting it?
The semi structured story interviews with eight creative writers explored
the first research question we identified key barriers to creativity,
as well as successful strategies for dealing with them.
Key findings include that participants tendency to engage in over criticizing
their own work and their difficulty in maintaining focus,
especially in a light of external distractions and discouraging feedback.
Participants also described their successful mitigation strategies,
especially creative voicing, in which they read their own text out loud.
Participants also noted the benefits of co-writing and listening to others
read their work out loud, as well as seeking positive or useful feedback.
Finally, all participants establish
regular writing routines and seek inspiration from external sources such as
books or through physical activity and the change of environment.
Based on these findings, we iteratively designed and developed SonAmi -
a simple interactive device that lets writers hear their texts voice out loud.
Since many writers are perfectionists who doubt themselves
and engage in over criticizing, we decided to prioritize the audio channel
and avoid visual interaction with the text.
This avoids overcharging the primary
visual channel and limits distraction while writers are immersed in their
creative flow, since obtaining positive feedback can be challenging.
We wanted to mimic the role of a helpful
friend who offers an external perspective without creating a negative feedback loop.
We also focused on the most boring
and monotonous task, which is editing a major source of procrastination.
So then we run a structured observational study to compare the effectiveness
of listening to the author's own voice versus a computer generated voice.
We found that listening to the computer voice
better supported editing by offering a level of objectivity.
Also, many participants felt uncomfortable recording their own voices
We therefore choose to embed a computer generated voice into a tangible artifact.
So previously in our interview study,
it showed that a majority,
which is a 5/8 participants, drink tea or coffee when writing.
Therefore, we link our tool to the act of taking a sip of coffee.
So we designed SonAmi as an interactive coaster that plays a computer generated
voice whenever the writers lift their mug.
The technology probe study
examined how 2 creative writers use
SonAmi as part of their daily writing routine.
Both found that SonAmi encouraged self reflection and
and gave them a new perspective on their text.
They also noted that it helps them shift,
focus and concentrate on editing, but only at times when they were not
already engaged in the writing intensively.
So to summarize, we believe that this natural form
of interaction of SonAmi meets the need for conscious interaction,
but is also available if the user decides
to explicitly trigger SonAmi to hear their text in the future.
We argue that creativity support tools should go beyond the desktop to include
interactive physical objects that can fit seamlessly into everyday activities.
Thank you.