Creative thinking is a fundamental yet elusive aspect of the creative process. A moment of breakthrough often follows a state of mind where an individual feels stuck in a “cloud” of thoughts. According to the flow theory, repetitive movements of the hands can create a state of high focus, often referred to as “the zone”. Recent research has shown that when an individual is in “the zone”, the clarity attained allows radically new perspectives to arise. By drawing on these observations, my project aims to utilize cutting-edge technologies to enhance creative thinking.
In MindFlow, I introduce a voice agent that can guide creators through the cloud-state by stimulating their divergent thinking. Throughout this machine-man brainstorming, creators are invited to perform craft-oriented actions involving repetitive hand movements, whose dynamics are recognized by means of computer vision. Then a machine-learning algorithm analyzes the hand movements and explores the thought-map of the creator. It does this by identifying focal connections between mind-states and making, such as moments of high-focus, typically accompanied by stopping points in the gestures, and key points, where creators tend to explain themselves both verbally and by hand gestures.
Elaborating on the most meaningful keywords collected throughout your conversation via AI, the agent guides creators towards an introspective path along which they build their personal bubble of thoughts, creating meditative conditions that can favor the emergence of “the zone” and let them experiencing a breakthrough.
Maya Zakai I mayaz27@gmail.com