Intro
This project focused on creativity-enhancing photography application for mobile devices. The app inspires the users to come up with better photo ideas and in the meantime see interesting and beautiful things in everyday life. The mechanics behind these two goals are based on research about the spreading activation theory.
One of the psychological processes underlying creativity is spreading activation of semantic processing (COLLINS, A. M., and LOFTUS, E. F.). The concepts in the semantic network are represented by nodes, which are linked to each other via connections. Spreading activation enables people to make close associations between different concepts (i.e. conceptual combination). This conceptual combination results in creating new knowledge by combining different concepts or rearranging distinct element of these concepts (MUMFORD, M. D. ,et al.). This process is different for close and remote-associated concepts. While close associations are easy to produce, remote associations are more difficult . Creative people possess flat associations hierarchy, which enables them to relate remote concepts easier. Therefore, the more creative you are, the easier it is to think of remote associations. This is why our app provides remote concepts to stimulate the creativity and imagination of the users.
Research
We conducted an exploratory, qualitative study, as this approach is particularly effective for capturing participant perspectives. By providing participants with a prototype of the app concept, we allowed them to interact with the app and asked them about their experiences.
Each participant received three assignments spread across three days. On the first day, they were tasked with taking three "interesting" photos throughout the day using their mobile phones. The aim was to encourage participants to be thoughtful in their selections, rather than taking random snapshots. Participants received WhatsApp reminders to take photos in the morning, afternoon, and evening. The photos from day one were not analyzed, as this assignment served to help participants compare their usual mobile photography habits with the app’s mechanics on day two.
On day two, participants interacted with the app prototype and were asked to take three interesting photos again. This time, the WhatsApp messages included example images to guide them in using the app’s mechanics, followed by the actual assignment.
On day three, participants completed a questionnaire, which was designed to gather insights based on the previous days’ assignments. This gap between the second assignment and the questionnaire, as well as between the first and third days, allowed for more thoughtful responses. The questionnaire aimed to address the research question and was composed of 18 questions, structured in a funnel format—from broad, general inquiries to more specific, focused questions.
The first seven questions were designed to explore the participants’ general photography experiences. These provided background information and allowed for a comparative analysis of participant profiles. Questions 8 to 15 focused on the participants’ experiences with the two assignments, starting with their reflections on day one, followed by day two, and concluding with a comparison of the two tasks. Finally, participants answered demographic questions to round out the study.
The research and questionnaire can be found here
