The methods are firmly rooted in the subjective perspective of makers, while also creating a bridge to more analytic notions from embodied cognitive science (e.g. interactivity, affordance, soft assembly, or embodied imagery). By creating these methods, we seek to infuse expert self-reflection, didactics, as well as ways to document crafts skills. At the same time, we hope to infuse future laboratory work on crafts cognitive.
Twelve expert makers are asked twice to create a novel object in 90 minutes, while thinking out aloud. Subsequently, they are interviewed in greater detail to explicate what they did at each stage of the process. We hereby seek to identify (a) what constraints a process happens in and (b) how different resources complement each other, including personal themes, design ideas and imaginations, as well as ways in which the makers competently exploit the engagement with the material itself as they explore, discover, tinker or utilize “happy accidents”. This core methodology is “enclosed” by two others: At the start of the project an informal studio visit is done with each maker to collect representative examples of their oeuvre and review how these came into existence. At the end of this project, the subjective perspective will be contrasted with that of peers who will rater the processes on several creativity-related dimensions.
