SynAPP: An online web application for exploring creativity
Alberto Gael Abadín Martínez, Universidade de Vigo (Spain) / AGH-UST (Cracow, Poland)
Bipin Indurkhya, AGH University of Science and Technology (Cracow, Poland)
Juan Carlos Burguillo Rial, Universidade de Vigo (Spain)
DESCRIPTION
SynAPP is a web application currently hosted at AGH-UST
(http://149.156.205.250:15180) designed to stimulate users’
creative skills through image association tasks and a rating
feedback system. In SynAPP users perform two tasks
related to image-image associations:
 -Associating two images using a word or short phrase. The
two images can be presented simultaneously, left and right,
or sequentially with a five seconds delay in between. The
user is allowed to make only one association per couple.
 -Evaluating associations generated by other users
according to two criteria: originality (0, 0.5 or 1 points) and
intelligibility (0, 0.5 or 1 points).
The set of image pairs for these two tasks are mutually
disjoint, so if a user generates association for an image pair,
then she or he does not evaluate associations generated by
other users for the same pair; and vice versa.
All the responses are recorded with their respective time
stamps, and the time taken to perform each association is
also recorded. A user can see how her or his associations
were rated (with respect to their originality and
intelligibility) by other users, and also how this evaluation
evolved over time. This information is shown in an intuitive
way using tables and graphs.
Users perform three standard tests of creativity before and
after using SynAPP:
 -Will Shortz & Morgan Worthy’s word equation (ditloid)
puzzles like "24 = H. in O. D." ("24 = Hours in One Day").
Different equations are used for before-SynAPP and afterSynAPP
tests.
 -Guilford’s alternative uses task: the user is asked to give
as many uses as possible of a common item. Different
objects are used for before-SynAPP and after-SynAPP tests.
 -Wallace & Kogan’s assessment of creativity: A test
similar to Guilford’s, but the user is asked to find objects
with a common property instead.
The answers given by each user are evaluated by the other
users, similar to the image associations, and statistics on
these evaluations is also displayed graphically to the user.
We hypothesize that SynAPP helps users to improve their
creative, out-of-the-box divergent thinking cognitive
abilities, and our goal is to properly evaluate this hypothesis
based on the analysis of the data collected from the
association tasks and the creativity tests.
APPLICATION WORKFLOW
International Conference on Computational Creativity 2012 229