Design research

My final bachelor project sparked my interest in the way that people are creative. Additionally, creating music is a way of being creative that is interesting to me, because of the way that people can express themselves. 
Therefore, I set out to find out how someone’s creativity can be influenced in their periphery, while making improvisational music.

In order to do so, participated in a threefold study wherein participants improvised for 20 minutes at home without the presence of the prototype, followed by two times 20 minutes with the prototype, in a controlled location. In order to get insights into their creativity and subjective experience, semi structured interviews were held.

The prototype consisted of a light that was placed in the participant’s periphery. Creativity was measured through two variables, supported by literature [1]. The first one being fluency, meaning the amount of notes that someone plays in a given amount of time. The second being the amount of variance of someone’s playing in that same amount of time, measured using the Shannon’s entropy equation [2].

The key insight is the fact that when an agent is not easily understandable, too many cognitive resources are spent on figuring out how it works, thereby limiting creative capabilities.

Skills used:

UX Research, Design Research, Prototyping, C++/Arduino, Circuit design, 3D Design

[1] Loui, P. (2018). Rapid and flexible creativity in musical improvisation: review and a model. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
[2] Entropy (information theory) – Wikipedia. Retrieved on 11-01-2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)