Unstuck - Ubiquitous Just-in-Time Interventions to Unleash Creativity and Sustain Wellbeing of Creative Professionals
Authors: Pablo E. Paredes, Shabnam Hakimi, Matthew K. Hong, Marco Antonio Mora-Mendoza, Kalani Murakami, Nayeli Suseth Bravo, Adrien Cogny, Matthew Klenk Published in: Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 10, No. 2, 2026
Creative professionals often experience “stuckness,” moments when ideas stall, or motivation fades. We define creative stuckness as a temporary state of self-regulatory misalignment—an impasse marked by perceived obstruction of progress and dysregulation of attention, affect, and motivation. Unstuck is a ubiquitous just-in-time system that detects contextual cues of stuckness and delivers brief, autonomy-preserving micro-interventions. A formative study with twelve professionals identified these mechanisms and informed a library of 98 interventions spanning embodied, cognitive, and reflective strategies. In a five-week deployment with 225 creative professionals (106 Control, 58 Random, 61 adaptive MLB), both intervention arms improved creative self-efficacy, coping, and wellbeing and produced consistent creativity boosts. 77% reported that Unstuck helped them manage their creativity and focus. Three months later (N=110), nearly 60% continued using Unstuck-inspired strategies such as mindful resets, reframing, and movement. These findings show that short, context-aware interventions can transform transient impasses into lasting self-regulation and creative wellbeing.