How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

Jeanette Falk; Yiyi Chen; Janet Rafner; Mike Zhang; Johannes Bjerva; Alexander Nolte

doi:10.1145/3706598.3713447

How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

Jeanette Falk, Yiyi Chen, Janet Rafner, Mike Zhang, Johannes Bjerva, Alexander Nolte

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceeding › Article in proceeding › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Hackathons have become popular collaborative events for accelerating the development of creative ideas and prototypes. There are several case studies showcasing creative outcomes across domains such as industry, education, and research. However, there are no large-scale studies on creativity in hackathons which can advance theory on how hackathon formats lead to creative outcomes. We conducted a computational analysis of 193,353 hackathon projects. By operationalizing creativity through usefulness and novelty, we refined our dataset to 10,363 projects, allowing us to analyze how participant characteristics, collaboration patterns, and hackathon setups influence the development of creative projects. The contribution of our paper is twofold: We identified means for organizers to foster creativity in hackathons. We also explore the use of large language models (LLMs) to augment the evaluation of creative outcomes and discuss challenges and opportunities of doing this, which has implications for creativity research at large.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	CHI '25 : Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Number of pages	34
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publication date	26 Apr 2025
Article number	198
ISBN (Electronic)	9798400713941
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713447
Publication status	Published - 26 Apr 2025
Event	2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025 - Yokohama, Japan Duration: 26 Apr 2025 → 1 May 2025

Conference

Conference	2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025
Country/Territory	Japan
City	Yokohama
Period	26/04/2025 → 01/05/2025
Sponsor	ACM SIGCHI

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Keywords

creativity
Hackathons
human-centered AI
large language models
quantitative methods

Access to Document

10.1145/3706598.3713447

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Cite this

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title = "How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale",

abstract = "Hackathons have become popular collaborative events for accelerating the development of creative ideas and prototypes. There are several case studies showcasing creative outcomes across domains such as industry, education, and research. However, there are no large-scale studies on creativity in hackathons which can advance theory on how hackathon formats lead to creative outcomes. We conducted a computational analysis of 193,353 hackathon projects. By operationalizing creativity through usefulness and novelty, we refined our dataset to 10,363 projects, allowing us to analyze how participant characteristics, collaboration patterns, and hackathon setups influence the development of creative projects. The contribution of our paper is twofold: We identified means for organizers to foster creativity in hackathons. We also explore the use of large language models (LLMs) to augment the evaluation of creative outcomes and discuss challenges and opportunities of doing this, which has implications for creativity research at large.",

keywords = "creativity, Hackathons, human-centered AI, large language models, quantitative methods",

author = "Jeanette Falk and Yiyi Chen and Janet Rafner and Mike Zhang and Johannes Bjerva and Alexander Nolte",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).; 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025 ; Conference date: 26-04-2025 Through 01-05-2025",

year = "2025",

month = apr,

day = "26",

doi = "10.1145/3706598.3713447",

language = "English",

booktitle = "CHI '25",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)",

address = "United States",

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Falk, J , Chen, Y, Rafner, J, Zhang, M , Bjerva, J & Nolte, A 2025, How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale. in CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems., 198, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025, Yokohama, Japan, 26/04/2025. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713447

How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale. / Falk, Jeanette ; Chen, Yiyi; Rafner, Janet et al.
CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2025. 198.

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceeding › Article in proceeding › Research › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

AU - Falk, Jeanette

AU - Chen, Yiyi

AU - Rafner, Janet

AU - Zhang, Mike

AU - Bjerva, Johannes

AU - Nolte, Alexander

PY - 2025/4/26

Y1 - 2025/4/26

N2 - Hackathons have become popular collaborative events for accelerating the development of creative ideas and prototypes. There are several case studies showcasing creative outcomes across domains such as industry, education, and research. However, there are no large-scale studies on creativity in hackathons which can advance theory on how hackathon formats lead to creative outcomes. We conducted a computational analysis of 193,353 hackathon projects. By operationalizing creativity through usefulness and novelty, we refined our dataset to 10,363 projects, allowing us to analyze how participant characteristics, collaboration patterns, and hackathon setups influence the development of creative projects. The contribution of our paper is twofold: We identified means for organizers to foster creativity in hackathons. We also explore the use of large language models (LLMs) to augment the evaluation of creative outcomes and discuss challenges and opportunities of doing this, which has implications for creativity research at large.

AB - Hackathons have become popular collaborative events for accelerating the development of creative ideas and prototypes. There are several case studies showcasing creative outcomes across domains such as industry, education, and research. However, there are no large-scale studies on creativity in hackathons which can advance theory on how hackathon formats lead to creative outcomes. We conducted a computational analysis of 193,353 hackathon projects. By operationalizing creativity through usefulness and novelty, we refined our dataset to 10,363 projects, allowing us to analyze how participant characteristics, collaboration patterns, and hackathon setups influence the development of creative projects. The contribution of our paper is twofold: We identified means for organizers to foster creativity in hackathons. We also explore the use of large language models (LLMs) to augment the evaluation of creative outcomes and discuss challenges and opportunities of doing this, which has implications for creativity research at large.

KW - creativity

KW - Hackathons

KW - human-centered AI

KW - large language models

KW - quantitative methods

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M3 - Article in proceeding

AN - SCOPUS:105005771402

BT - CHI '25

PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

T2 - 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2025

Y2 - 26 April 2025 through 1 May 2025

ER -

How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

Abstract

Conference

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

AUB Link

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How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards Automated Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

Abstract

Conference

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

AUB Link

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Projects

Digital Twins for Abundant Feedback: Novel Feedback Paradigms via Explainable Multilingual Natural Language Processing

Multilingual Modelling for Resource-Poor Languages

Cite this