I believe creativity is a fundamental aspect of humanity and encompass all specific fields of study. Taking creative computing this semester has been a breath of fresh air—to get to use a different part of my brain, and yet still apply all of the computer science knowledge I’ve gained during my time at Virginia Tech.
The most enjoyable part of the class has no doubt been our project. I often will program some artworks or interactive playgrounds in JavaScript but without direction and just for fun. This project has essentially been a larger outlet for me, except this time with more direction, since we have defined goals we decide on as a group. Having this direction (as we learned in class) actually gives more creative motivation than being completely open-ended. I felt that having defined goals and pursuing them with the best of my ability has been a successful and rewarding experience.
I also think a major factor in the enjoyment I had with this project is the team aspect. Often in computer science courses we have individual assignments or projects to do with a partner. Being a part of a group, however, has made the collaboration more motivated and just better all around. I feel proud of our end product because we all strived to create and polish it together, as a team effort. It far exceeded any expectations I had when we first came up with our idea, especially that we did it all in vanilla JavaScript without any libraries. My biggest takeaway from this course is that being creative is more fun and more effective with collaboration.
Regarding other aspects of the course, I enjoyed learning about the important of ambiguity in creativity. It’s not something I had considered before, and I think it both gave direction and made an impact in our project. Reading and presenting on the papers I thought was all right, although I felt some of them were boring. I liked the layout of the course in terms of studying some aspects of creativity before starting our project; I enjoyed those lectures. Perhaps we could start our projects earlier in the semester, then we might have more time to progress further.
Overall, I am very happy that I chose this capstone. I feel that it rounded out my degree and gave me some different perspectives including even working on a team where we shared all the responsibilities from start to finish. It has given me experience with collaboration for the future, and I definitely think it has improved my own creativity.