Play, Autonomy and the Creative Process
DS 73-1 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity Volume 1
Year: 2012
Editor: Duffy, A.; Nagai, Y.; Taura, T.
Author: Loudon, G. H.; Deininger, G. M.; Gordon, B. S.
Section: Practice
Page(s): 87-96
Abstract
Play has started to be recognised as having an affect upon the creative design process, but mainly in terms of playing with prototypes. In this study we explore play a little further to understand more about the type of play and its affect upon the creative process. We look at physical, imaginary, social and non-related play, in relation to solving a creative problem. Surprisingly, the condition with the highest scoring and fastest completion times was the non-related play condition. This would suggest that there is more going on than just iterative feedback when a person is playing in the creative design process. Relatively new research has started to show that play may also be important because of the intrinsic motivation that is inherently part of the nature of play. This intrinsic motivation and elements of autonomy have also been shown to have an affect upon people‘s feelings of well-being. This study supports the idea that play may be even more important to the creative process because of the affect it has upon a person‘s
Keywords: play, autonomy, creativity