Creativity support tools (CSTs) typically frame search as information retrieval, yet in practices like electronic dance music production, search serves as a creative medium for collage-style composition. To address this gap, we present LoopLens, a research probe for loop-based music composition that visualizes audio search results to support creative foraging and assembling. We evaluated LoopLens in a within-subject user study with 16 participants of diverse musical domain expertise, performing both open-ended (divergent) and goal-directed (convergent) tasks. Our results reveal a clear behavioral split: participants with domain expertise leveraged multimodal cues to quickly exploit a narrow set of loops, while those without domain knowledge relied primarily on audio impressions, engaging in broad exploration often constrained by limited musical vocabulary for query formulation. This behavioral dichotomy provides a new lens for understanding the balance between exploration and exploitation in creative search and offers clear design implications for supporting vocabulary-independent discovery in future CSTs.

翻译：创造力支持工具通常将搜索视为信息检索，但在电子舞曲制作等实践中，搜索却充当了拼贴式创作的创意媒介。为弥合这一差距，我们提出了LoopLens——一个面向循环音乐创作的研究原型，它通过可视化音频搜索结果来支持创意素材的搜寻与组合。我们通过一项包含16名不同音乐领域专业水平参与者的被试内用户研究评估了LoopLens，参与者需完成开放式（发散性）和目标导向式（收敛性）两类任务。研究结果揭示了明显的行为分化：具备领域专业知识的参与者能利用多模态线索快速聚焦于少量循环素材，而缺乏领域知识的参与者则主要依赖听觉印象进行广泛探索，且常因音乐查询词汇的匮乏而受限。这种行为二分法为理解创意搜索中探索与利用的平衡提供了新视角，并为未来创造力支持工具中如何支持独立于专业词汇的发现机制提供了明确的设计启示。