peb design: interviews

Eight interviews were conducted with participants who had a breadth of experience across different domains, industries, and environments. While all participants had participated in creative collaboration within a professional environment, two participants also had experience with creative collaboration within the context of personal or artistic projects. At least two participants also had experience with creative collaboration in an academic environment.

The number of people, and the size of the organisation, where the participants practiced creative collaboration also varied and offered a good range of scale.

The interviews were conducted as semi-structured conversations, with a printed script (see below) used a guide to ensure key areas were covered. Interviews were recorded using the voice memo application on an iPhone. The interviews were loosely structured on four main categories: process, collaboration, tools, and review (reflection).

The interviews took place in an informal neutral environment (e.g. coffee shop), with one exception, which was conducted at the participant’s office. Questions were focused on past experience, as well as desired future improvements to tools, processes, and environments. Participants were asked to review and reflect on their tools, the environments in which they use them, and their own creative process.

While the overall goal of the interviews was to investigate the themes identified from the thematic analysis of the literature, additional detailed subject goals were:

• Identify key points of creativity during the creative process.

• Identify elements that either facilitate or inhibit creativity within within the creative process.

• Identify elements that either facilitate or inhibit collaboration.

• Identify specific tools that have been, or are currently being used, during collaborative idea generation and/or creative problem solving.

• Identify which tools have been, or are currently being used to capture and share ideas.