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In recent years, there has been a strong interest in developing Creativity Support Tools for many exciting areas of research such as art and music. Yet few such tools have been developed to support creativity in advertising. This is unusual since advertising, like art and music, is a highly creative endeavour of the human mind. The goal of advertising is to transform a communicational objective of a product or a service into a creative idea. A tool that would enhance the development of creative ideas in advertising would be highly beneficial for the advertising industry and possibly shed light on the mystery behind creativity. In this thesis, I developed Creative Pad, a new Creativity Support Tool to assist advertising creative in generating creative ideas for advertising. In developing Creative Pad, I studied advertising creativity and human creative thinking. I developed a framework for analysing the advertising process, in which the process is viewed as having three distinct phases: a message, an idea, and an execution. A significant implication of this view is that the process for developing ideas for new advertisements and the process of executing those ideas and turning them into creative products are independent. Each step is the result of a significant creative process. Creative Pad is developed to assist in the development of creative ideas for new advertisements. To assist this creativity, relevant triggers are needed. Research has shown that individuals with high associative skills produce more creative advertising. Creative Pad supports the associative skills of the advertising creative and exploits the use of the Internet as a dynamic database. It finds words and sentences related to the original communicational objective, providing relevant triggers for the associative creative process in the minds of the advertising creative. Several experiments using Creative Pad were conducted with advertising creative and students with no advertising background. The results show that Creative Pad supports the generation of new ideas in two ways. First, and most important, all the subjects were able to develop interesting new ideas. In particular, the advertising creative were able to design a sketch of the advertisement from ideas generated using Creative Pad. Second, I was able to find a connection between the triggers, the words and sentences selected by the user during the creative process, and the ideas generated. Although the connection might be considered a weak one, it nonetheless demonstrates that a connection exists between the ideas developed by the advertising creative and those suggested by Creative Pad.

In recent years, there has been a strong interest in developing Creativity Support Tools for many exciting areas of research such as art and music. Yet few such tools have been developed to support creativity in advertising. This is unusual since advertising, like art and music, is a highly creative endeavour of the human mind. The goal of advertising is to transform a communicational objective of a product or a service into a creative idea. A tool that would enhance the development of creative ideas in advertising would be highly beneficial for the advertising industry and possibly shed light on the mystery behind creativity. In this thesis, I developed Creative Pad, a new Creativity Support Tool to assist advertising creative in generating creative ideas for advertising. In developing Creative Pad, I studied advertising creativity and human creative thinking. I developed a framework for analysing the advertising process, in which the process is viewed as having three distinct phases: a message, an idea, and an execution. A significant implication of this view is that the process for developing ideas for new advertisements and the process of executing those ideas and turning them into creative products are independent. Each step is the result of a significant creative process. Creative Pad is developed to assist in the development of creative ideas for new advertisements. To assist this creativity, relevant triggers are needed. Research has shown that individuals with high associative skills produce more creative advertising. Creative Pad supports the associative skills of the advertising creative and exploits the use of the Internet as a dynamic database. It finds words and sentences related to the original communicational objective, providing relevant triggers for the associative creative process in the minds of the advertising creative. Several experiments using Creative Pad were conducted with advertising creative and students with no advertising background. The results show that Creative Pad supports the generation of new ideas in two ways. First, and most important, all the subjects were able to develop interesting new ideas. In particular, the advertising creative were able to design a sketch of the advertisement from ideas generated using Creative Pad. Second, I was able to find a connection between the triggers, the words and sentences selected by the user during the creative process, and the ideas generated. Although the connection might be considered a weak one, it nonetheless demonstrates that a connection exists between the ideas developed by the advertising creative and those suggested by Creative Pad.

Les outils de design graphique traditionnels n’ont que peu évolué depuis leur création, il y a plus de 25 ans. Dans cette thèse, je m’intéresse à deux questions principales: Comment les designers travaillent-ils avec leurs outils de design numériques? Comment peut-on créer de nouveaux outils numériques pour le design qui supportent les pratiques existantes? J’étudie en premier lieu quatre pratiques de design. Celles-ci s'échelonnent depuis des opérations spécifiques telles que la sélection de couleurs, l’alignement et la distribution d’objets graphiques vers des pratiques plus complexes telles que la structuration de la mise en page et la collaboration avec des développeurs pour créer de nouvelles interactions. Dans ces quatre études empiriques, je caractérise le décalage existant entre les outils numériques actuels et les pratiques des designers. Je montre comment les outils du design numérique actuels détachent la créativité de l’utilisation des outils en donnant la priorité à des valeurs telles que l’efficacité et la facilité d’utilisation. Je propose un nouveau type d’outil de design nommé “Substrats Graphiques”, fondé sur les résultats empiriques de mes quatre études et qui combine la souplesse et l'expressivité de la programmation avec la manipulation directe permise par les interfaces graphiques traditionnelles. Je conçois neuf outils différents qui répondent aux attentes identifiées dans mes études empiriques en réifiant (transformant en objets concrets) les processus spécifiques des designers en tant que Substrats Graphiques. À travers quatre observations structurées, je montre comment les designers s’approprient ces substrats dans leurs propres termes. Dans cette thèse, je soutiens que les Substrats Graphiques ouvrent l’espace des possibles des outils pour les designers en permettant de combler l’écart entre la programmation et les interfaces graphiques. / Mainstream digital graphic design tools seldom evolved since their creation, more than 25 years ago. In this dissertation, I address the following questions: How do designers work with design software? And how can we design novel design tools that better support designer practices? Using StoryPortraits, a method designed to capture rich qualitative insight, I first study four designer practices, ranging from specific design operations such as color selection, alignment and distribution, to more complex endeavors such as layout structuring and collaboration with developers. In these empirical studies, I characterize the existing mismatch between current digital design tools and designers practices. I show how design tools, because they decouple creativity from tool use, prioritize values such as efficiency and user-friendliness. Based on my empirical findings, I propose a new type of design tools, Graphical Substrates that combine the strengths of both programming and traditional Graphical User Interfaces. I design nine different tools that address the needs identified in the four empirical studies by reifying specific user process into Graphical Substrates probes. In four structured observation studies, I show how designers can appropriate these probes in their own terms. In this thesis, I argue that Graphical Substrates open the design space of designers' tools by bridging the gap between programming and graphical user interface to better support the wealth of designers' practices.

Les machines de fabrication personnelle, comme les imprimantes 3D, permettent aux créateurs occasionnels de fabriquer leurs propres objets. Il est possible de créer des pièces rigides, mais aussi des pièces souples, flexibles ou malléables. Ces propriétés mécaniques ouvrent des perspectives inédites dans la recherche en Interaction Homme-Machine (IHM) puisqu’elles permettent de réaliser de nouvelles formes d’interaction. Le défi reste toutefois d'intégrer des capteurs et du retour visuel dans ces matières. Les sciences des matériaux ont introduit plusieurs techniques pour produire des éléments interactifs, mais leur application requiert une expertise spécialisée ou la disposition d’équipements très couteux. Ma thèse se concentre sur les professions créatives, comme les professionnels du design, les architectes, ou les chercheurs en IHM. Elle vise à accompagner leur processus de conception et de prototypage avec des matériaux souples et interactifs, produisant des objets élastiques, des modèles avec des formes reconfigurables, ou même des maquettes qui peuvent être découpées. De tels matériaux pourraient enrichir notre interaction avec le monde numérique de trois manières différentes : 1) les dispositifs prosthétiques et l’informatique ubiquiste 2) le design de produits personnels 3) la fabrication interactive. J’introduis d’abord une nouvelle méthode pour intégrer des capteurs tactiles, des capteurs de proximité et des écrans électroluminescents dans des matériaux de silicone étirables. Basée sur des techniques d’impression en sérigraphie, la méthode permet de fabriquer rapidement des interfaces étirables et peu coûteuses, qui peuvent être intégrées dans les vêtements et dans d’autres objets ordinaires. Deuxièmement, je présente une approche pour créer des modules de constructions interactives, qu’on appelle “Tangramis Interactifs”. Les Tangramis interactifs sont des matériaux souples, par exemple du papier, pliés et combinés ensemble pour créer des structures modulaires en 3D. Ils peuvent réagir au toucher, être actionnés, et intégrer des composants électroniques comme des LEDs. Nous utilisons une technique rapide d’impression par jet d’encre pour intégrer des capteurs et des circuits dans le papier. Nous avons également développé une interface graphique qui permet aux créateurs de concevoir la forme et le comportement interactif de leurs propres interfaces physiques avant de les imprimer sur papier. Troisièmement, j’introduis une méthode de fabrication de matériau capable à identifier sa forme (“shape-aware material”). Ce matériau peut détecter et communiquer sa géométrie en temps réel durant son découpage par un créateur. La méthode s’appuie sur une nouvelle technologie de capteurs de forme, imprimés par jet d’encre et intégrés dans du matériel de maquettage, comme le carton mousse. Notre logiciel aide les créateurs à générer du matériel de prototypage en 2D ou en 3D qui peut capter sa forme, en configurant la topologie des capteurs pour optimiser la précision du modèle. Il permet également d’établir le lien entre un modèle physique et sa représentation numérique dans un environnement CAO (Conception Assisté par l’Ordinateur), par exemple Blender et Unity. Notre approche soutient un processus de fabrication bi-directionnelle en intégrant des outils de modélisation à la fois physiques et numériques. / Personal fabrication machines, such as 3D printers, allow casual makers to create custom objects, which may also contain soft, flexible, or shape-changeable parts. Making use of these mechanical properties and developing novel forms of interaction opens up new possibilities for research in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). However, embedding sensing and output capabilities into material is still challenging. Although research in materials science has introduced a range of methods for producing interaction-aware materials, these methods require significant domain expertise and often rely on specialized and expensive equipment. My dissertation focuses on casual makers, designers, and HCI researchers, and investigates how to support their design and physical modeling tasks with interactive, non-rigid materials that are stretchable, shape configurable, or cuttable. I explore three directions on how such materials can enhance user interaction, with applications to wearables and ubiquitous computing, DIY product design, and interactive fabrication. First, I introduce a new fabrication method for embedding touch sensing, proximity sensing, and electroluminescent displays into stretchable silicone materials. Based on screen printing, the method allows for rapidly fabricating inexpensive and highly stretchable user interfaces than can be embedded in wearables and other everyday objects. Second, I present an approach for creating interactive paper-folded building blocks that we call Interactive Tangrami. Interactive Tangrami are made of flexible materials such as paper, folded and combined together to form modular 3D structures. They support touch sensing and actuation and can also integrate rigid electrical components, such as LEDs. We use a rapid ink-jet printing technique to apply sensors and circuits on paper. We also offer a software tool that helps makers to design the geometry and interactive behavior of their physical user interfaces and then print them on paper. Third, I introduce a method for fabricating shape-aware material, which is modeling material that captures and streams its own shape while being cut by an artist. The method is based on a novel inkjet-printable sensing technology that can be embedded into a variety of cuttable material such as foam-core. Our software toolkit helps makers produce 2D or 3D shape-aware material and customize its sensing topology for higher sensing accuracy. It also allows them to link the physical model with its digital copy in a 3D CAD environment, such as Blender and Unity. Overall, our approach supports a bi-directional fabrication workflow that combines both physical and digital modeling tools.

Cette thèse constitue une recherche expérimentale pour évaluer la capacité des outils d’aide à la conception du « Game Design » de jeux vidéo. Elle cherche à dégager les éléments destinés à instrumenter et à améliorer le développement de ces outils.La production des jeux vidéos s’appuie sur de nombreux outils techniques allant des éditeurs graphiques et sonores jusqu’au moteurs de jeux. Mais, en amont, et à l’inverse des praticiens d’autres domaines du design, les concepteurs de jeux (Game designers) utilisent généralement peu d’outils dans leur travail quotidien. Bien que des modèles conceptuels et des outils logiciels aient été développés pour les assister, il manque une étude approfondie sur la pratique de ces outils. En prenant le point de vue d’un « Game Designer », notre étude se base sur une étude de terrain, menée par un participant–observateur, utilisant les outils sur 5 études de cas.Nous analysons dans un premier temps les pratiques du Game Design : les différentes activités impliquées et leur mise en œuvre dans le processus de conception. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement aux développe-ments et tendances actuelles.Le Chapitre 3 positionne le Game Design dans le contexte plus général des travaux en cours sur la critique et l’analyse du Design (Design Studies). Nous en concluons que le Game Design se situe plus comme dans le domaine de la conception artisanale (« craft-based ») et que l’utilisation d’outils serait une évolution vers une conception réflexive (« self-conscious »). Cette évolution constitue donc, à notre avis, une rupture par rapport aux pratiques actuelles.Le chapitre 4 retrace l’histoire du développement des outils de Game Design tant du point de vue de la recherche que de l’industrie. Ceci nous permet, au chapitre 5, de donner une définition plus précise et comparative des outils de Game Design.Le chapitre 6 formalise les questions de recherche de cette thèse et la nécessité d’une évaluation basée sur la pratique. Le point de vue méthodologique de notre travail est ensuite développé dans le chapitre 7.Nous présentons ensuite nos observations et analyses d’expériences réali-sées en utilisant une sélection d’outils reposant sur différentes approches. Parmi ces outils citons: « Articy:Draft », « Ludoscope » et « Progression Planning ». Nos critères d’évaluations sont tirés des publications sur le « Design Support » et le « Creativity Support Tool ».Au chapitre 12 nous décrivons et discutons les expériences effectuées avec un outil de design que nous avons développé dans le but d’évaluer et d’étendre l’approche « progression planning ». Nous explicitons les choix de conception de l’outil issus en partie du travail d’analyse mené dans cette thèse.La conclusion résume nos observations et introduit des principes d’amélioration des outils de « Game Design » et propose d’étendre nos travaux sur différents types d’outils et contextes d’utilisation non abordés ici. / This thesis contributes practice-led evaluation research to the question of whether game design tools can effectively support and expand game design practice. It offers insights that can be used to inform future game design tool development.Game designers, unlike most other design practitioners, typically do not use design tools in their work. While conceptual models and software tools have been developed to address this, we lack discussion and critique of how tools work in practice.Taking the point of view of a practitioner, this study of game design tools is based on longitudinal, practice-led evaluation research conducted as a par-ticipant-observer, applying game design tools to 5 contrasting game design case studies.Design tools support game design practice. In Chapter 2 I set out what that practice is today, reviewing the game design process and design activities, and giving particular attention to contemporary trends and directions.Chapter 3 situates game design within the broader context of Design Studies. After reviewing relevant ideas from this literature, I conclude that game design is best characterised as a crafts-based design discipline, and that adoption of design support would mean a shift towards “self-conscious” design. I argue that, within this context, the adoption of tools into current practice would represent a significant and disruptive change to current practice.Chapter 4 traces the history of development of game design tools within the game design and research communities. Chapter 5 goes on to offer a more precise definition of game design tools and presents a comparative review of the tools within this scope.In Chapter 6 I argue for the need bring practice-led evaluation research to this question. Here I set out my research goals and questions, before specifying the particular tools I practiced with for this study. Chapter 7 discusses methods used in relevant research fields and outlines the method used for this project.Chapter 8 introduces the game projects I used as case studies and describes how I worked with each. Chapters 9 and 10 present observations and anal-yses of my experiences using a selection of tools that vary in their approaches. These include (though not exclusively): Articy:Draft (Nevigo GMBH 2011), Machinations (Joris Dormans 2009), Ludoscope (Joris Dormans and Leijnen 2013), and “progression planning” (Butler et al. 2013). Evaluation themes and criteria are drawn from the Design Support and Creativity Support Tool literature. Chapter 11 refocuses attention on the practicalities, addressing the question of how game design tools integrate into the wider context of practice.In Chapter 12 I present and discuss my experiences with my own game de-sign tool, which I prototyped in order to evaluate and extend one of the tool approaches under study. I explain my tool design choices, some of which reflect the knowledge I have acquired through the course of this study.Chapter 13 summarises my conclusions in relation to how design tools might best support game designers, and offers ideas for further practice-led evaluation research related to this question.

This thesis focuses on the design of interactive paper interfaces for supporting musical creation. Music composition has been deeply influenced by the computational power brought by computers but despite the use of software to create new sounds or work with symbolic notation, composers still use paper in their creative process. Interactive paper creates new opportunities for combining expression on paper and computation. However, designing for highly individual creative practitioners who use personal musical representations is challenging. In this thesis, I argue that composers need personal and adaptable structures on paper in which they can express and explore musical ideas. I first present three field studies (Chapter 3) with contemporary composers that examined the use of paper and the computer during the composition process and how linking the two media supports exploration of musical ideas. I then describe a participatory design study that investigates the use of formal musical representations (Chapter 4) for creating new paper interfaces that extend computer-aided composition tools. I introduce Paper Substrates (Chapter 5), interactive paper components that provide modular structures for interacting with personal representations of computer-based musical data. I detail tools that we created to develop paper applications with the Paper Substrates approach. Several examples illustrate the creation of personal structures and musical content that can still be interpreted by computer-aided composition software. I then describe a structured observation study with 12 composers who used Polyphony to compose a short electroacoustic piece (Chapter 6). Polyphony is a unified user interface that integrates interactive paper and electronic user interfaces for composing music. The study allowed us to systematically observe and compare their compositional processes. Finally, I report on a research and creation project with the composer Philippe Leroux during the composition of his piece Quid sit musicus (Chapter 7). Several work sessions with the composer and a musical assistant lead to the design of new paper- based interfaces for generating composition material, synthesizing sounds and controlling the spatialization from handwritten gestures from calligraphic gestures over an old manuscript.

abstract: With the rapid growth of mobile computing and sensor technology, it is now possible to access data from a variety of sources. A big challenge lies in linking sensor based data with social and cognitive variables in humans in real world context. This dissertation explores the relationship between creativity in teamwork, and team members' movement and face-to-face interaction strength in the wild. Using sociometric badges (wearable sensors), electronic Experience Sampling Methods (ESM), the KEYS team creativity assessment instrument, and qualitative methods, three research studies were conducted in academic and industry R&D; labs. Sociometric badges captured movement of team members and face-to-face interaction between team members. KEYS scale was implemented using ESM for self-rated creativity and expert-coded creativity assessment. Activities (movement and face-to-face interaction) and creativity of one five member and two seven member teams were tracked for twenty five days, eleven days, and fifteen days respectively. Day wise values of movement and face-to-face interaction for participants were mean split categorized as creative and non-creative using self- rated creativity measure and expert-coded creativity measure. Paired-samples t-tests [t(36) = 3.132, p < 0.005; t(23) = 6.49 , p < 0.001] confirmed that average daily movement energy during creative days (M = 1.31, SD = 0.04; M = 1.37, SD = 0.07) was significantly greater than the average daily movement of non-creative days (M = 1.29, SD = 0.03; M = 1.24, SD = 0.09). The eta squared statistic (0.21; 0.36) indicated a large effect size. A paired-samples t-test also confirmed that face-to-face interaction tie strength of team members during creative days (M = 2.69, SD = 4.01) is significantly greater [t(41) = 2.36, p < 0.01] than the average face-to-face interaction tie strength of team members for non-creative days (M = 0.9, SD = 2.1). The eta squared statistic (0.11) indicated a large effect size. The combined approach of principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) conducted on movement and face-to-face interaction data predicted creativity with 87.5% and 91% accuracy respectively. This work advances creativity research and provides a foundation for sensor based real-time creativity support tools for teams. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2011

The sound synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that has become commonplace in audio production for music, film, television and video games. Despite its widespread use, creating new sounds on a synthesizer - referred to as synthesizer programming - is a complex task that can impede the creative process. The primary aim of this thesis is to support the development of techniques to assist synthesizer users to more easily achieve their creative goals. One of the main focuses is the development and evaluation of algorithms for inverse synthesis, a technique that involves the prediction of synthesizer parameters to match a target sound. Deep learning and evolutionary programming techniques are compared on a baseline FM synthesis problem and a novel hybrid approach is presented that produces high quality results in less than half the computation time of a state-of-the-art genetic algorithm. Another focus is the development of intuitive user interfaces that encourage novice users to engage with synthesizers and learn the relationship between synthesizer parameters and the associated auditory result. To this end, a novel interface (Synth Explorer) is introduced that uses a visual representation of synthesizer sounds on a two-dimensional layout. An additional focus of this thesis is to support further research in automatic synthesizer programming. An open-source library (SpiegeLib) has been developed to support reproducibility, sharing, and evaluation of techniques for inverse synthesis. Additionally, a large-scale dataset of one billion sounds paired with synthesizer parameters (synth1B1) and a GPU-enabled modular synthesizer (torchsynth) are also introduced to support further exploration of the complex relationship between synthesizer parameters and auditory results. / Graduate

Cette thèse porte sur la conception d’interfaces de papier interactif dédiées à la création musicale. Malgré l’apparition d’outils informatique permettant de créer de nouveaux sons ou d’opérer des transformations sur des représentations symboliques de la musique, les compositeurs utilisent toujours le papier pour composer. Le papier interactif rend théoriquement possible la création d’interfaces combinant l’expression sur le papier et la puissance de calcul de l’ordinateur. Cependant, la conception de telles interfaces reste un problème complexe car chaque compositeur développe son propre processus de création, impliquant de nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles représentations musicales. Cette thèse propose l’utilisation de structures personnelles et adaptables sur le papier pour permettre aux compositeurs d’exprimer et d’explorer leurs idées musicales. Trois études conduites avec des compositeurs à l’Ircam (Chapitre 3) s’intéressent aux rôles du papier et de l’ordinateur lors du processus de composition et les possibilités du papier interactif pour l’exploration des idées entre ces deux supports. Je décris des sessions de conception participative (Chapitre 4) qui examinent l’utilisation de représentations musicales formelles pour la création de nouvelles interfaces de papier couplées avec les logiciels de composition assistée par ordinateur. Je présente les Paper Substrates (Chapitre 5), des composants papier qui définissent des structures modulaires pour l’interaction avec des représentations personnelles de données musicales issues d’environnements informatique. Je décris une boîte à outil ainsi qu’une application graphique permettant de développer des interfaces utilisant les Paper Substrates. Des exemples illustrent la création de structures personnelles et de données musicales sur le papier qui peuvent être interprétées par les logiciels de composition assistée par ordinateur. Je présente une étude d’observation structurée conduite avec 12 compositeurs utilisant Polyphony pour composer une pièce électroacoustique (Chapitre 6). Polyphony est une interface qui intègre le papier interactif avec d’autres interfaces pour composer. L’étude a per- mis d’observer et de comparer les différents processus de composition des participants. Enfin, je détaille un projet de recherche et création mené avec le compositeur Philippe Leroux pour la création de sa pièce Quid sit musicus (Chapitre 7). Nous avons conçu de nouveaux systèmes interactifs pour la création de ressource compositionnelles, la synthèse sonore et le contrôle de la spatialisation à partir de tracés effectués sur une partition médiévale. / This thesis focuses on the design of interactive paper interfaces for supporting musical creation. Music composition has been deeply influenced by the computational power brought by computers but despite the use of software to create new sounds or work with symbolic notation, composers still use paper in their creative process. Interactive paper creates new opportunities for combining expression on paper and computation. However, designing for highly individual creative practitioners who use personal musical representations is challenging. In this thesis, I argue that composers need personal and adaptable structures on paper in which they can express and explore musical ideas. I first present three field studies (Chapter 3) with contemporary composers that examined the use of paper and the computer during the composition process and how linking the two media supports exploration of musical ideas. I then describe a participatory design study that investigates the use of formal musical representations (Chapter 4) for creating new paper interfaces that extend computer-aided composition tools. I introduce Paper Substrates (Chapter 5), interactive paper components that provide modular structures for interacting with personal representations of computer-based musical data. I detail tools that we created to develop paper applications with the Paper Substrates approach. Several examples illustrate the creation of personal structures and musical content that can still be interpreted by computer-aided composition software. I then describe a structured observation study with 12 composers who used Polyphony to compose a short electroacoustic piece (Chapter 6). Polyphony is a unified user interface that integrates interactive paper and electronic user interfaces for composing music. The study allowed us to systematically observe and compare their compositional processes. Finally, I report on a research and creation project with the composer Philippe Leroux during the composition of his piece Quid sit musicus (Chapter 7). Several work sessions with the composer and a musical assistant lead to the design of new paper- based interfaces for generating composition material, synthesizing sounds and controlling the spatialization from handwritten gestures from calligraphic gestures over an old manuscript.