Towards a creativity support tool in processing: understanding the needs of creative coders

Creative coding as a paradigm has seen increased interest in recent years. However, detailed studies of the processes and needs of these creative coders are currently lacking. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study into the practices of both novice and expert creative coders by analysing their approach to a creative design task in an observational, qualitative study. The findings have been placed into a taxonomy of needs, which can feed into the design of tools that aim to assist creative coders. The paper concludes by discussing the implications the taxonomy of needs has on defining requirements for a creativity support tool in the Processing environment.