Patterns of creative UX in immersive collaborative design

Abstract

Creativity can be studied in many ways: processes, tools, personality, etc. In this paper, we are interested in subjective emotional experience linked to creativity. People usually make rich experiences, and are more likely to be engaged in creative processes, when they face highly challenging task, and feel confident in their skills (Flow from Csikszentmihalyi [9]). On this base, our interest is to understand the dynamics of experience, how it evolves in time. We use a previously developed method, the Design Flow 2.0 [18], which allow, on a granular way, to describe the emotional states during design. In a sample of ideation sessions, during a co-design immersive studio in design pedagogy, thanks to the granular assessment, we identify patterns of creative experience linked to the creation of new and relevant ideas. Our results show two patterns, one which was expected (designers experience stress before the expression of the idea, optimal experience -flow- during its expression, and feel in control just after), and an unexpected reversed pattern (control-flow-stress), which respectively illustrate a proactive and a reactive posture in design. We discuss these results and open perspectives, about the usage of the method to enhance co-design and to address other types of user experiences.