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Jonas Frich Pedersen

Digital tools in collaborative creativity

1. Title and short overview of your PhD thesis. The goal of my PhD project is to develop methods for mapping and analysing the interplay between digital tools and collaborative creativity in a professional context. The PhD is part of an overarching 4-year research project regarding Digital Tools in Collaborative Creativity with the overarching research question How do digital tools influence and transform collaborative creativity? Included in the project is also the proposal of novel tools for creativity support. These projects originate from a lack of scientific understanding of how digital tools affect the way professionals in creative industries are working and collaborating today. In practice, people are utilizing a plethora of different software tools often distributed over multiple devices in diverse context complicating studies of collaborative creativity. The majority of the empirical work in this PhD thesis is to be completed in collaboration with a global design firm. 

2. The nature of your ‘non-written work'. The non-written work will likely be in the form of digital tools for supporting collaborative creativity in a professional context. Digital tools implying solely software tools with minimal or no inclusion of hardware parts. 

3. In what way does your ‘non-written work' relate to your PhD thesis? The non-written work provides two possibilities in relations to my thesis. Firstly, it is a way of manifesting the knowledge obtained from the initial studies of creative professionals practices and their use of digital tools. Secondly, it might provide new ways of studying the interplay between tools and creativity. 

4. How you integrate or consider integrating your ‘non-written work' into your PhD thesis. Probably as part of one or two individual publications, that are to be included in the final dissertation. 

5. Which scholarly traditions do you base your methodology on? What could be considered Research through Design as presented by Zimmerman et al. (2007) or perhaps along the lines of Ben Shneiderman's principles described in The New ABCs of research (2016) 

6. Which difficulties have you encountered regarding your ‘non-written work’? None so far. 

7. What do you wish to gain from the workshop? I wish to meet scholars with experience in similar research approach.