Collaboration Tools and Patterns for Creative Thinking

TL;DR

This paper explores how design patterns can formalize and connect creative thinking methods, enabling digital tools to support and innovate collaborative creativity processes.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of design patterns for creative thinking, linking different collaboration forms and guiding digital tool development to enhance creativity.

Findings

Design patterns capture key invariants of creative methods.

Patterns connect different collaboration forms.

Tools can support and transform creative processes.

Abstract

Many creativity methods follow similar structures and principles. Design Patterns capture such invariants of proven good practices and discuss why, when and how creative thinking methods match various situations of collaboration. Moreover patterns connect different forms with each other. Once we understand the underlying structures of creative thinking processes we can facilitate digital tools to support them. While such tools can foster the effective application of established methods and even change their properties, tools can also enable new patterns of collaboration.