CoCOasis: The Collaborative Creativity Oasis

Abstract

Cocoas is (CCO) aims to improve education (learning) and foster creativity in design disciplines, through the use of ICT provided by human-computer based expert systems, while reducing the 'skills gap' when students transfer from the current education system into the 21st Century Skills industry. Creative processes are often hindered by context, predefined boundaries, constraints and 'blind spots' (a term used to describe unexpected, unseen, unknown, unforeseen and/or ignored areas of knowledge and gaps in an individual's understanding and experience of the world around them). The concept of this vision is to support human creative processes by augmenting them with technology, enhancing creativity and tackling the blind spots, for example, head-on. We envision the CCO as an open and flexible area, indoors or outdoors, which can fit or emerge anywhere/anytime/anyhow. It can be a room, a space, a yard, a public space or simply a floor. An oasis can be made from a range of available artifacts (e.g. chairs, tables, walls, dividers, screens, whiteboards, cardboard boxes etc.) or could stay bare, each eventually being populated with actors/users and/or stakeholders. Such a "place" is easily transformed into a CCO the moment interaction and activity (i.e. face-to-face, dialogue, playing, gaming etc.) is started and participants immerse in the interactive creative design process.