Creativity-the ability to produce novel and useful ideas-has become a democratic necessity and the most important human skill to face the uncertainties brought by the digital era we are going through. This era and its digital technologies are reshaping the social, behavioural and cognitive development of digitally enhanced individuals who are growing up with digital habits. The fundamental questions that arises from this context are about the effects of the technological evolution on the creative thinking abilities of the digitally enhanced generation. What are the positive and negative impact on creativity brought by digital technology? Through a Creative 4.0 model, built from the analysis of the current scenario of transition, the paper presents an overview and some preliminary reflections about the changes that the digital technological evolution of our century is bringing on human creativity, particularly on the creative design process.
In the 21 st Century we are witnessing a radical transformation of society, primarily due to the introduction of a wealth of new devices, sensors, robots, and applications that are changing how people process information, behave, and socialise. The digital era and its technologies are having a profound impact especially on the digitally enhanced generation who are growing up with digital habits (TV, cell phones, video games, etc.) which are required to develop new competencies and skills among which human creativity is the most important one. The design education system is struggling to keep up with the demands of these new digital challenges. It has, therefore, become essential for design research to understand the impact of digital technologies on the creative process to develop an appropriate training model for the next digital generation of designers representing the actors of a near future. The objective of this paper is to briefly present the Creativity 4.0 model framed as part of the methodology used to identify the most crucial factors that influence creativity in the digital era. The model allows to explore some condition brought by the digital revolution that could enable or inhibit those factors and that could be of interest for the design educators' community.
On behalf of all the staff and students at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), our conference partners in the city of Nottingham and Cumulus we want to take this opportunity to thank all those who took part in the conference 'In this Place' and for making it such an imaginative and thought provoking event. In particular we would like to take this opportunity to thank Tracey Newton, Sarah Connor, Sarah Dossor and Venu Dhupa from NTU for their creative input, making the conference and this subsequent publication such a success. Our sincere thanks to them. So to the title and questions for the conference and this publication
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