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activity (Coughlan and Johnson
2006
). This data is not easily recoverable from the
fi nished products. Contrastingly, synchronous creative proposals (such as improvi-
satory musical practices) fuse products and processes into a unifi ed entity. In this
case, the assessment of the product imposes the same requirements as the assess-
ment of the creative performance: time-based methods.
Furthermore, while creative products are not enough to enhance the knowledge
of aesthetically aware designs, creative processes may be insuffi cient to assess the
level of support for creative behavior. Creative potentials are externalized as creative
actions, which may yield creative by-products (Runco
2007
). The creative magni-
tude of these by-products can only be assessed in relation to a specifi c social context
(or social niche - Keller
2012
). This context is shaped by the life histories of the
participants of the creative experiences. Therefore, evaluations of technological
support for creative behavior demand: (1) assessments of by-products, (2) observa-
tions of situated behaviors, and (3) analysis of the profi les of the participants. As
Mumford et al. (
2011
) suggest, creativity evaluation methods are necessarily multi-
dimensional. Ubiquitous music research is no exception.
This section discussed the adoption of relational properties in ubiquitous music
experimental research, highlighting the methodological implications of creativity-
aware interaction aesthetics. The requirements for multidimensional assessment
encompass the evaluation of by-products, the observation of situated behaviors and
the analysis of the personal factors.
6.6
Conclusions and Future Work
Generally speaking, since the late 1990s, musical practices have incorporated
resources that were absent from purely instrumental music performance and from
studio-centered creative practice. Ubiquitous music making has expanded this trend
by embracing personal experiences that lead to creative musical phenomena that
were excluded from professional musical practices. Creative music making has
incorporated the creative experience as a target of compositional practice.
Furthermore, music making through technological means has become the rule,
rather than the exception.
We believe that considering the conceptual framing provided by relational prop-
erties is useful to help researchers and practitioners fi nd common ground concern-
ing the understanding of everyday creative activities and foster the emergence of
design solutions for supportive digital artifacts. The time- and spatial-tagging meta-
phors can, in fact, be applied to other domains than the creation of sonic products.
For example, tools to support digital storytelling are, in some cases, already using
time- and spatial-tagging metaphors to facilitate the organization of collected con-
tent and enable the emergence of contextualized narratives based on people in situ
experiences (see, e.g., Nordmark and Milrad
2012
).
To overcome the limitations of previous methodological approaches, three strate-
gies were identifi ed: (1) usage of real-world resources and conditions, (2) furnishing
