Sparking Creativity with Robots: A Design Perspective

Abstract

We present the design and evaluation process of a robot aimed at stimulating creativity in humans in a collaborative drawing-oriented task. Collaboration towards a common goal is known to be one of the most influential factors for creativity nourishing. The social robot acted as a collaborative peer in a drawing activity, taking turns with the human, to complete their drawing. In each turn, both "artists" (the robot and the human) draw something new until they achieved their final drawing. The goal was to study if a robot, in comparison with a tablet, can stimulate creativity. A total of 28 participants were distributed across robot and tablet conditions. Creativity scores for each drawing were calculated. Contrary to what was expected, the creativity score did not present a statistically significant main effect across conditions. We discuss our results under a design perspective, addressing the role of the robot’s embodiment and presence, as well as the purpose of use for robots in society and what implications there is for design.