The Intersection of Users, Roles, Interactions, and Technologies in Creativity Support Tools

Creativity Support Tools (CSTs) have become an integral part of artistic creation. The range of CST technologies is broad—from fabricators to generative algorithms to robots. The interaction approaches for CSTs are accordingly broad. CSTs combine specific technologies and interaction types to serve a spectrum of roles and users. In this work, we tackle a comprehensive understanding of how the intersections of users, roles, interactions, and technologies form a design space for CSTs. We accomplish this by reviewing 111 art-creation CSTs from HCI and computing research and analyzing how diverse aspects of CSTs relate to each other. Our findings identify patterns for designing CSTs, which can give guidance to future CST designers. We also highlight under-explored types of CSTs within the HCI community, providing future directions that CST researchers can pursue given the current trajectory of technological advancement. This work contributes an integrating perspective to understand the landscape of art-creation CSTs.