Abraham Maslow once said “The key question isn’t ‘What fosters creativity?’ But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.”
Every designer is creative. In the world of software design, we also create artifacts. Where does this creativity come from? What exactly is meant to be creative? In this chapter we explore questions such as these. We also take a brief look at the creativity literature and discuss how information technology tools can help humans become more creative and vice versa.