Casual Creators in the Wild:A Typology of Commercial Generative Creativity Support Tools

Casual creators are a genre of creativity support tool that integrate a generative system into the creative process with the goal of empowering amateurs to engage in autotelic and enjoyable creativity. They have been posited as a unique means of democratising creativity through the support of user exploration via system generativity, yet little is known about what casual creators are actually available to wider audiences. We conducted a qualitative analysis of currently available casual creators on the App Store. We found three categories of interaction techniques in widely available casual creators, which we describe in their exploration potential, feedback speed, and user autonomy.