SonAmi: A Tangible Creativity Support Tool for Productive Procrastination

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Our goal is to help creative writers make procrastination productive. Interviews with eight creative writers highlighted two key practices: Over Criticizing, where perfectionism and negative self-appraisal demotivates them and reduces their output; and Creative Voicing, where speaking their text aloud promotes reflection and inspires new possibilities. A structured observation study compared writers’ perception of their own, pre-recorded text versus computer-generated voices. The latter distances them from their text and offers new perspectives. We developed SonAmi, an interactive coaster that voices selected dialog whenever the author lifts their mug. Two creative writers said SonAmi made them feel they were listening to “someone else’s text” or “a podcast”, which helped them identify and improve writing issues. We show how tangible creativity support tools can build upon authors’ existing strategies i.e., voicing their own words, and take advantage of naturally occurring events e.g., taking a sip of coffee, to support productive procrastination without interfering with creative flow.