Creating a Collaborative Space for Creativity through a Pervasive User Experience

This paper explores the potential of a pervasive user experience to inspire, provoke and support creative thinking amongst participants in an intensive ideation workshop. The pervasive experience used a iPad-based virtual narrator to guide groups of participants around a physical and digital environment. It took place towards the start of a three-day workshop and the playful, self-directed nature of the experience was designed to align with subsequent workshop activities. This paper describes the user experience, presenting observations and findings through the lens of space (facilitation, augmentation and story), considering how the experience related to and supported the overall workshop aims of ideation and creative thinking. We conclude by examining some of the tensions that emerged, namely; 1) the disconnect between researcher and participant expectations, 2) the potential trade off between "authentic" outputs and participant engagement, and 3) bridging the knowledge within the workshop with the world outside the workshop.