Implementation of Creative-Pad: A New Creativity Support Tool

Abstract

To achieve success, one has to be able to think creatively. Henceforth, many methods for creative thinking have been developed. Many organizations seek creative support tools to assist them to be productive and innovative. There is now a strong and urgent need to develop such tools. This research describes the implementation of a new creativity support tool, codenamed Creative-Pad, a tool for brainstorming of ideas. Creative-Pad was first thought of by my supervisor at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. The task in this research is to implement the idea so that the program is ready for experimentation. Creative-Pad is designed initially as a tool to help creative directors in an advertising agency to come up with new ideas to create an advertisement for their clients. These directors are often given a one-line brief describing a client product or service. For example, the sentence, “A car with more family space”, would describe a client’s new product which is a car targeted for family. The creative directors would have to design an advertisement suitable for promoting this product. They will need lots of ideas. Creative-Pad works by tapping into the internet as a rich source of information about all things. It takes in one or more keywords from the initial sentence and automatically searches the internet to retrieve any related information. It then processes the search results to extract interesting words and sentences. These words and sentences are then “beamed” in front of the creative directors to stimulate their thoughts for the new advertisement. An interface was specially designed to encourage creative thinking. Creative Pad is implemented using Java and is a stand-alone application.