When someone asks you to “be more creative,” how do you interpret it? You might understand it as a polite (or condescending) way of saying that what you’ve been doing is not sufficiently creative. Creativity is still an underexplored quality that we are not exactly sure how to facilitate. For that reason, creating computational systems that can promote people’s creativity is a significant challenge. Personally, I don’t like people’s perception of creativity which is represented as a light bulb next to their heads. Rather, one way that I define creativity from my own experience is that it is external recognition of creators’ tenacity, which manifests through artifacts.
These nine projects presented on this website are final semester-long projects from Creative Computing Studio (CS4644, VT). I am proud of all the teams who successfully created an artifact that is functional and creative. This course offers students a rare chance to create an artifact of their choice before they graduate, using all the skills that they have learned over the last three or four years or so.
This course is particularly demanding. It is because I designed the course in a way that students will experience various components in creative practice. Here are the following activities that they have experienced:
- Ideation
- Finding collaborators
- Collaboration
- Prototyping
- Weekly reflection (stand-up report)
- Discussion
- Iterative design
- Compromise in design given the time limitation
- Giving critiques
- Time management (balancing work with other courseloads)
- Analyzing and improving based on feedback
- User testing
- Public speaking
- Video presentation
- Written presentation
- Live Demo
- Self Reflection
Therefore, the artifacts that are presented on this website are the embodiment of this creative process. Please enjoy their creations available on each page.
May 22th, 2022
Sang Won Lee