This paper describes three design values that we apply for designing playful interactions. Interactive play objects can stimulate social interaction and physical play by providing motivating feedback to players' behavior; they can allow players to create their own game goals and rules in an open-ended play context and support social player interaction patterns. This design approach is illustrated by six design cases in which our assumptions were examined in various play contexts. The results show that the application of these design values can lead to rich and appealing innovative play concepts. Players can create a wide range of (physical) games using open-ended play objects, and properties of the play objects, such as being personal or shared, influence the type of social interaction.
The importance of an early and on-going focus on users in interactive system design is widely accepted. However, in practice, involving users poses many problems and requires designers to balance conflicting demands. Various factors can hinder or ease the involvement of users. This paper reports a case study involving the design of a bespoke application and gives a detailed account of the obstacles and facilitators to user involvement encountered during the design activity. The obstacles and facilitators are presented in terms of issues such as contacting and selecting users, motivating users, facilitating and mediating meetings and offering points of focus for user contributions. We report and contrast the views of various stakeholders in the design process, and supplement these with our own observations as non-participant observers. Finally, we discuss issues raised by the study and draw out a number of lessons for the CHI community.
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