Play, autonomy and the creative process

G. H. Loudon, G. M. Deininger, B. S. Gordon

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

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 'state of being'.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationICDC 2012 - 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity, Proceedings
Pages87-96
Number of pages10
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Event2nd International Conference on Design Creativity, ICDC 2012 - Glasgow, United Kingdom
Duration: 18 Sept 201220 Sept 2012

Publication series

NameICDC 2012 - 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity, Proceedings
Volume1 DS73

Conference

Conference2nd International Conference on Design Creativity, ICDC 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityGlasgow
Period18/09/1220/09/12

Keywords

  • Autonomy
  • Creativity
  • Play

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