Creativity Support Tools

Spring 2008 - Spring 2009

My masters project has been in the area of using technology to support creativity.  I have conducted a research study exploring how experienced designers organize and use both tangible and digital information during their creative process in hopes that this can tell us more about how to build effective creativity support tools.  

(more later)

The Career Dream Machine

Fall, 2008

This application prototype was created to help children envision themselves in careers they might otherwise not know about, or relate to.  It presents kid-friendly career information  based upon their interests, then encourages behavior consistent with staying in school and further success.  Originally concepted to spark the imaginations of children in poverty, it is equally applicable to any children.  

Created for Intro to Human-Computer Interaction, Fall 2007, Bruce Walker.
Team Members:  Carol Bales, Tianjie Deng, Kripsa Mehta, Neil Pradhan

Visit the Prototype Online 

Third Life:  Your World Beyond Your Imagination

Spring 2008

This SecondLife space was created as an exhibit for a mythical "Third Life", the illusion of a new cutting-edge 3D environment.  The "exhibit" was designed to create an emotional build-up, full of promise and excitement, ultimately leading to a non-event. We utilized spectacle, showmanship, and irony throughout the space to convey the message of Third Life to visitors.  The pitch:  "Third Life - so much more than SecondLife you have to climb out of SecondLife to see it."  (Think vintage Star Trek "For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky")

Created for Expressive Virtual Space, Spring 2008, Celia Pearce.
Team Members:  Carol Bales, Michelle Kwasny, Evan Mandel, Bobby Schweizer, Puja Verma

Learn More 

Electronic Wallpaper

Fall 2008

This research explores the properties of thermochromic ink and conductive materials for use in manufacture of an am-bient information display.  A wall-mountable poster-sized display was created for use in the home to display informa-tion useful in preparation for the day.  The prototype dis-play has thermochromic ink on paper and conductive traces affixed to the back.  The traces are wired to a microproces-sor that converts power to heat, and controls activation of each “pixel” of data.  A software interface imports data feeds for Weather, Schedule and Temperature.  The final prototype is remarkably thin and reasonably inexpensive and warrants further investigation as a manufacturable product.

Created for Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing, Fall 2008, Thad Starner

Team Members:  Carol Bales, Jon Drews, Matt Lee

View the Video    Read the Report

e-Xquisite Corpse

Spring 2009

This project took the form of an Exquisite Corpse exercise executed with cellular technology.  The Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist game in which the participants create segments of a drawing, having seen only a few lines of a previous drawing as reference.  In this iteration rather than paper and pencil to create a drawing, we used text messaging on cell phone technology to create a narrative text piece.  Each participant received a text message containing a few sentences of a narrative.  They were asked to immediately reply with a text message that somehow continued the story.  No recipient received more than the contents of a single text message, usually under 160 characters in length.  The length was limited by the affordances of the technology.

Created for Experimental Media, Spring, 2009, Celia Pearce

Read the Results     Visit the Course Blog

Design for Educational Technology

Spring 2009

This software is designed to help middle school students learn to think scientifically as they learn about sociology.   It is influenced by the learning theories of constructionism, situationism, scaffolding and knowledge building.