Creativity has always been considered a major differentiator to separate the good from the great, and we believe the importance of creativity for software development will only increase as GenAI becomes embedded in developer tool-chains and working practices. This paper uses the McLuhan tetrad alongside scenarios of how GenAI may disrupt software development more broadly, to identify potential impacts GenAI may have on creativity within software development. The impacts are discussed along with a future research agenda comprising six connected themes that consider how individual capabilities, team capabilities, the product, unintended consequences, society, and human aspects can be affected.
@article{arxiv.2406.01966,
title = {Creativity, Generative AI, and Software Development: A Research Agenda},
author = {Victoria Jackson and Bogdan Vasilescu and Daniel Russo and Paul Ralph and Maliheh Izadi and Rafael Prikladnicki and Sarah D'Angelo and Sarah Inman and Anielle Lisboa and Andre van der Hoek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.01966},
year = {2024}
}