Improving creative thinking abilities using a generic collaborative creativity support system

In this paper, we report on our experiences with a generic collaborative creativity support system with the focus on how users accept the system and how it influences their creative thinking abilities. The key idea behind the creativity support system was to facilitate creative thinking of groups by providing them a toolset of different creativity techniques under one single user-interface. A field study indicated that this effectively lowered the barrier for the team to try various creativity techniques for their problems, which in term had a positive impact on their creative thinking ("thinking-out-of-the-box"). Besides, we present some interesting results gained from a questionnaire after the study that point out other characteristics of the system that positively influenced the user's experience in the creative thinking process.