This article introduces artists and creative professionals to a decision-making framework for selecting different Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies that can support creative practice.
Author: Majella Clarke
Learning and creating in creative practice often require significant time and financial investments in the skills and knowledge required to use different technologies and digital tools. Whether it be software, programming languages, or a way of working, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way we create and express our artistic identity. Tech radars are a simple tool to track and evaluate emerging technologies.
This article aims to support creative professionals in assessing the current and near-term outlook for key artificial intelligence tools that are used in creative practice. This article develops and presents a tech radar specifically with a focus on artificial intelligence in creative practice. The tech radar developed for this article can help inform creative professionals how to choose and invest their time in learning new tools, knowledge and skills that apply artificial intelligence within creative practice.
The tech radar was first developed by Thoughtworks to assess and provide visual insights on different technologies and practices using what is called the ring assessment, which looks like a radar. The radar gives a snapshot of the current thinking of the relevant positioning of technologies and practices within the digital environment, often business-focused.
The original Thoughtworks tech radar is comprised of four quadrants – tools, techniques, platforms, languages and frameworks. There are other tech radars that build on the Thoughtworks radar and present their own assessment of the current technology trends and environment. The Zalando Tech Radar uses a similar approach, but its four quadrants focus more specifically on data management, data stores, infrastructure and languages. While some of the technologies in the Zalando and Thoughtworks Radars might be transferable to creative practices, we must remember that these radars provide perspectives oriented towards businesses and do not apply the typical criteria, decisions and resources that creative professionals use in their practice. The domains of business and science prioritize things like efficiency, customer acquisition, knowledge discovery, and automation. While creative professionals might enjoy enhanced productivity, improving audience engagement and technologies that expand experimentalism. Arguably, one of the most important priorities for professional artists is agency. Without agency, it is difficult to express and maintain artistic identity.
Both individuals and organisations can use tech radars to inform and strategically position their orientation of their skills, tech tools, and knowledge. Tech radars can:
Recent events such as the end of Finale, the emergence of Dorico, the sunset of financial support for PatchWork Graphical Language (PWGL), the emergence of Mediapipe Studio and the plethora of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) applications make a tech radar for creative practice timely.
This tech radar will apply the original evaluation criteria developed by Thoughtworks for reviewing the different AI software, tools, techniques and development platforms.
Adopt: Technologies that are mature, reliable, and have proven their value for use in creative practice. The technologies have built community support and have generally proven effective for application in a creative project.
Trial: These are newer technologies that may have been applied in small project ventures and pilots. Their scale of application is relatively small. However, they have the potential to provide new creative possibilities and have had some success.
Assess: These technologies should undergo a critical assessment to determine their long-term value or broader use in a creative project.
Hold: Technologies that are not yet ready for use, or require further research, or have been disrupted. They might be immature, have performance issues or lack community support.
There is a growing variety of tech radars on the internet, some more useful than others. As a rule of thumb, tech radars are best to use when frequently updated and should show the date of their most recent update. Technology is changing rapidly, as a result, new tools, frameworks and practices are becoming available. Therefore, look for Tech Radars that are more recent, within the last 6-12 months.
Tech Radars should have clearly presented methodologies and apply the standard assessment of adopt-trial-assess-hold, to maintain consistency with the original approach and allow for comparability between different radars. 
Tech Radars help professionals to strategically make decisions on technologies that affect their industry and practice. Tech radars are used to:
The use of Tech Radars encourages the thoughtful adoption of technology. This is important because there are many emerging technologies and technology-driven trends. Some of these technologies take considerable time to learn and develop proficiency in. Let’s take the case of programming languages. There are many different programming languages used by creative media artists (Python, Haskell, Ruby, etc, to name just a few), and it takes 3-12 months to become proficient in coding with a particular language. A tech radar can help us evaluate which programming languages are likely to be most supported and relevant in the near future, so that our skills remain relevant.
Checklist for using a Tech Radar:
