Though most of our research focuses on youth, we are also interested in how to empower adult artists to learn about computer science, and to use it to enhance their artistic work. We call this effort Creative++.

To begin exploring possibilities for adapting our youth-focused technologies for adult use, we held a creative arts and tech jam at the University of Colorado Boulder's Museum of Natural History. The jam was 12 hours long and participants included artists, engineers, programmers, designers, and musicians. 

"Even though I don't know much about coding, I learned a lot"

"I am a musician and also fluent in sign language so I wanted to find a way to kind of combine both of those things because there are a lot of  DHH, deaf and hard of hearing, kids at my school and I think music is an important thing that everybody should experience"

"Being able to use different physical components to manipulate Unity, that's been really eye opening"

Projects

Creative++ participants worked in groups of about 4-5 people. There ended up being 6 groups that each worked on their own projects. Projects incorporated a variety of different tools including craft materials, motors, sensors, visuals, games, and music.

Findings

Some of the participants of Creative++ consented to take part of a research study which was focused on answering a few questions

1. What happens when you bring a variety of people from different backgrounds together to work on a project around creative technology? 
2. What are the different ways people find to work with Blocky Talky? 
3. What are some ways we can add to BlockyTalky in the future?  Other features that would be nice?  

We conducted several semi-structured interviews throughout the 12 hour jam, and also gave participants a questionnaire at the end of the event.

One of the things we found was that more of the participants surveyed (23 of the 30 participants were surveyed) identified themselves as artists than as a programmers. 19 of the participants identified as an artist, whereas 10 participants identified as a programmer. Additionally, 80% of people who identified as a programmer also identified as an artist.
In addition, 67% of those who chose not to identify as a programmer reported that they have programmed something before.

Participants who did not describe themselves as programmers, on average, rated BlockyTalky's ease of use at 7.25 (out of 10). The participants who identified as programmers rated BlockyTalky's ease of use at 7.6 (out of 10).

Other photos from the jam