Capturing Creativity in Collaborative Design Processes

This paper is concerned with the question of how we can capture creativity in collaborative design processes consisting of two or more individuals collaborating in the process of producing innovative outputs. Traditionally, methods for detecting creativity are focused on the cognitive and mental processes of the solitary individual.

A new framework for studying and capturing creativity, which goes beyond individual cognitive processes by examining the applied creative process of individuals in context, is proposed. We apply a context sensitive framework that embraces the creative collaborative process and present the process in a visual overview with the use of a visual language of symbols.

The framework, entitled C3, Capturing Creativity in Context, is presented and subsequently evaluated based on a pilot study utilizing C3. Here it was found that the framework was particularly useful for detecting divergence and convergence, and for backtracking of explored themes in the design process.