How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

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

doi:10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290

How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

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

^*Corresponding author for this work

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	Apr 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290
Publication status	Published - Apr 2025

Keywords

Hackathons
Creativity
Human-Centered AI
Large Language Models
LLMs
Quantitative Methods

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10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290Licence: CC BY 4.0

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Digital Twins for Abundant Feedback: Novel Feedback Paradigms via Explainable Multilingual Natural Language Processing
Bjerva, J. (PI), Lindsay, E. (PI) & Zhang, M. (Project Participant)
Villum Foundation
01/01/2024 → 31/12/2025
Project: Research
Multilingual Modelling for Resource-Poor Languages
Bjerva, J. (PI), Lent, H. C. (Project Participant), Chen, Y. (Project Participant), Ploeger, E. (Project Participant), Fekete, M. R. (Project Participant) & Lavrinovics, E. (Project Participant)
Carlsbergfondet, Google
01/09/2022 → 31/08/2025
Project: Research

Cite this

@inproceedings{f68f9c8238844c31b8471a8d76ea1690,

title = "How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative 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 = "Hackathons, Creativity, Human-Centered AI, Large Language Models, LLMs, Quantitative Methods",

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

year = "2025",

month = apr,

doi = "10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290",

language = "English",

booktitle = "CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",

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

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How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative 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.

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

TY - GEN

T1 - How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative 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

Y1 - 2025/4

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 - Hackathons

KW - Creativity

KW - Human-Centered AI

KW - Large Language Models

KW - LLMs

KW - Quantitative Methods

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2503.04290

M3 - Article in proceeding

BT - CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

ER -

How Do Hackathons Foster Creativity? Towards AI Collaborative Evaluation of Creativity at Scale

Abstract

Keywords

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Projects

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

Multilingual Modelling for Resource-Poor Languages

Cite this