Sticky Creativity : Post-it Note Cognition, Computers, and Design

Sticky Creativity: Post-It® Note Cognition, Computers, and Design presents the interesting history of sticky notes and how they have become the most commonly used design material in brainstorming, business model generation, and design thinking. The book brings together researchers from psychology, computer science and design in order to understand why and how sticky notes are used, why they work well, and whether sticky notes are replaceable or improvable by a digital counterpart. The book covers psychology, computers and design respectively. From a psychological perspective, cognitive and socio-cognitive theories are used to explain the functions sticky notes serve in idea generation and creative collaboration.

Following sections present the findings from three very different computerized instantiations of sticky notes and discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when trying to digitize sticky notes.

• Highlights the benefits of sticky notes in idea generation and creative collaboration
• Explores the use of sticky notes in a variety of creative, design professional and educational settings
• Includes research perspectives from cognitive psychology, computer science and design studies

Bo T. Christensen is Professor MSO in Creative Cognition at Copenhagen Business School. A cognitive psychologist by training, his works include ethnographic studies of creative practices (e.g., design, architecture, cuisine, engineering, software) and experimental studies of design cognition. His theoretical focus is on creative cognitive processes such as analogy, simulation and incubation, as well as on the evaluation of creative products.

Kim Halskov is professor in interaction design at Centre for Digital Creativity, Aarhus University, where he in addition to being director of Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction, see CAVI.au.dk, also is co-director of the Centre for Participatory IT, see PIT.au.dk. His research area includes innovation processes, design processes and methods. His theoretical focus is on aspects of creativity such as inspiration, emergence and transformation of ideas over time, design spaces, collaboration, digital tools and materials.

Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose is an associate professor in the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies at Aarhus University. Clemens has worked as a postdoc at Computer Science, Aarhus University and at Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris-Sud. He has furthermore spent a year as a user interface specialist in the software industry. Clemens received his PhD in Computer Science in 2009 from Aarhus University supervised by prof. Susanne Bødker.

Clemens’ main interest is the fundamentals of interactive computing, particularly to support and understanding computing with multiple devices and multiple people. Many of his ideas are crystallised into the Webstrates platform (webstrates.net), which he leads the development of.