Over the course of 6 weeks, our group of 5 tried to create a novel social experience through creating art with others. We first ideated new areas for social experiences. We then conducted and analyzed user surveys based on that idea. After we created a couple of ideas for how to solve problems that were identified in those surveys, we decided on the one that we thought was most promising, our Art Tree idea. Since then, we have conducted 2 prototyping sessions with 18 users each time to test out the feasibility of our idea.

Initially, our group wanted to tackle how to solve social loneliness as a result of the pandemic. We wanted to find a novel way to connect regularly disconnected users through the digital world. Some of the ideas that we proposed were a digital/augmented reality canvas for people to collaborate on drawings, an icebreaker app that allows restaurant tables to “battle”/play games against each other, and a community punch card for sustainable acts. After getting feedback from both the teaching staff and classmates, we were told that the ideas that we proposed didn’t solve the problem of social loneliness and that the ideas were very disconnected from each other; the ideas didn’t fall under one specific theme.

Based on that feedback, our group decided to pivot and focus on collaboration rather than social loneliness. Our topic and motivation became creative collaboration through art. We were inspired by creative social experiments like r/Place that motivated people of all backgrounds to work together to create mind-blowing art. We created two ideas centered around creative collaboration and narrowed it down to one final idea that became our final prototypes.

Online Journals and articles:

From online journals and articles, we discovered the term distributed creativity, which describes collaborative efforts to make creative products while promoting intercultural inclusion and diversity.

Online Survey:

We also conducted an online survey to understand how users currently create and view art. It contained 15 questions on their creative habits, viewings, and habits. We received 26 total responses and found that most people viewed art through platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, but only 65% actively participate in creating art. We also found that most people preferred to do solo art projects, but those who preferred collaboration or had no preference wrote that it was more fun when working with others to create art. Lastly, most users (87%) stated that they liked to share their artwork with others. One person stated, “the whole point of making art is for other people to experience it”. Some people responded that sharing their finished artwork was very important.

Interviews:

We have conducted interviews with people who are actively creating art to understand their creative process focusing on collaboration. 7 people participate in it with 7 questions. We found that time cost and conflicts in work style are the main reason to avoid collaboration in creation. 5 out of 7 interviewees have mentioned that, and one person said, "People have their interpretation into art. It is hard to nail it at the same time. It is good to do in solo". At the same time, Although most people in the survey mentioned they liked to share their artwork with others, 3 out of 7 interviewees mentioned they only shared their artwork with their close ones. One person states,"If my friend likes it, I will share it on twitch and Instagram."

Competitors:

Lastly, we looked into competitors that had a similar idea to Art Tree such as Sketch a Day, Inktober, and Gartic Phone. All had drawing a prompt as their main focus with different time limits. We liked the prompt and time limit aspect, but we also wanted to go beyond just drawing for our project. We also wanted to differentiate ourselves by making something low-stakes like Gartic Phone while also incorporating a social media aspect like Sketch a Day and Inktober.

We continued basing our prototype in FigJam for the second round of prototyping. This time, we extended our last prototype by adding new features that were requested from our survey responses.

1. We made the timer the main feature of our model and a prospective default feature in our actual app.

2. We changed our liking system from non-restricted heart stickers to a voting component that is easier to manage and gives a better visualization of like counts.

3. We also scaled up our participant groups to simulate a real application scenario where large numbers of users mingle.

4. We incorporated a chat function that supports both commenting and casual chats for communicating ideas. We imposed a very tight timeframe for commenting during our prototype, but we intend to not put any time constraints in the real app to let users fully utilize opportunities to exchange ideas and collaborate.

5. Most importantly, we introduced a new form of art — writing — to our model. The writing tree works in the same way as the art tree, where users are given a prompt and create a story that others can piggyback off of in later iterations. They are free to modify or insert bits in any part of the previous storylines.

Free Discussion Session:

• “The writing mode was daunting at the beginning, but once I started to do it, it was surprisingly fun.”

• “ Due to the short time range, I just put down whatever pops into my mind and that’s actually good because it’s counter-perfectionism.”

• “Yeah, you just don't get caught up in details.”

Online survey:

• 11 total responses

• 100% responded that the prototype was intuitive

• Most students that were placed in the writing group at first were not keen on the idea, but after trying it out, they enjoyed it, especially since there was a timer

• All students in the drawing group responded that they liked the drawing process alongside the new liking system and chat feature

  • • Only 1 student said that they preferred being able to react with emotes beyond alike

• Prompt:

  • • ⅔ responded preferring a specific prompt and ⅓ responded preferring an open-ended prompt

    • Some users weren't aware of the prompt because it wasn't made clear

• Timer aspect:

  • • 90% responded that 2 minutes was just the right amount of time to create

    • Most students don’t like the idea of an unlimited timer since people would take too long and be less inclined to collaborate or motivated to finish the art piece

    • Time crunch creates pressure to get something out and fewer thoughts of perfectionism

      1. 1. • Fun and enjoyable to have a time crunch

Overall Takeaways:

• Have a clearer display of prompt

• Individual chat feature for each art piece

• Liked timer aspect

• Liked getting inspiration from other artworks

• Responses showed that people loved the interaction part of the prototype through collaboration

• Majority of responses like the chat feature and liking system

  • • However, most participants didn’t use the chat feature/wasn’t active in using it; some wanted more time in order to use the chat feature

• Additional ways to collaborate

  • • Being able to work on an art piece together or forming teams to create art together