Yellow is Mine!: Designing Interactive Playgrounds Based on Traditional Childrens Play - Entertaining the Whole World - page 66

Fig. 5.2 Examples of traditional children's games: playing with marbles, running the hoop and the
skip rope. (Cornelisz 1837 , pgs. 3/33/36)

the children are playing Tic-Tac-Toe or they are not ” (Salen and Zimmerman 2003 ,
p. 25). Open-ended play can evolve into a game over time, as players try to enforce
certain play behaviour by defining rules and limitations.
Children's games often require few attributes, consisting of little more than some
simple toys, the players themselves and their creativity (Soute et al. 2009 ). They
often require physical activity and can be played with basic materials which can
be carried along (hoop, ball, stick). Finally, the rules of such games are often few
and simple, adaptable by the players themselves. Whether a stick is to be used for
hitting, drawing or waving is up to the children inventing their game. The simple
rules make the games very accessible and easy to understand for anyone eager to join
a game, and make it easy to adapt a game by replacing, removing or adding a rule. It
also makes it easy to convey these games from generation to generation. Sometimes,
simple games—made-up by children themselves—can even have a higher appeal to
them than more complex and predefined games (Bekker et al. 2008 , Fig. 5.2 ).
Although play is potentially always and everywhere possible (Wigley 1998 ), most
societies know the concept of playground as an environment specifically designated
for play. The space may contain one or more playground artefacts. Traditional play-
ground artefacts do not offer feedback and do not actively interact with the user. For
example, a slide is often a rigid wooden structure which just 'sits' there in a play-
ground. However, its presence within the playground allows for a number of ways to
interact with it (climbing up the slide, sliding downwards, hiding beneath the slide),
and children, when incorporating the artefact in their play, may assign any meaning
to it when it fits their current play.

5.4.2 Elements From Related Work in Interaction Design

Soute et al. ( 2009 ) and Sturm et al. ( 2008 ) address a number of key issues for the
successful design of Head Up Games and intelligent, interactive playgrounds of
open-ended play: