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for open-ended play, such as ensuring that the interactions that a playground offers
do not entirely determine the playful activities taking place in the playground. The
relative abundance of fully-contained play that was observed during this evaluation
might have been caused by the novelty of the playground, which incited children to
first focus on exploration of the playground's possibilities. It is however likely that
other factors, such as the physical setup of the playground, had a larger impact on
the play behaviour exhibited by the children. This means that the design of interac-
tions should consider more than just the playful quality of an interaction as such,
by incorporating the relation between the interaction and the context in which it is
being deployed in.
Another factor that could have been of influence on the behaviour exhibited by the
children during the evaluation is that, although their participation was voluntary, it
was also planned for. In other words, it remains unknown what effect the playground
would have had on their behaviour if it had been placed in an environment more
natural to the children (e.g. their school). Interesting questions remain, such as:
What is the effect of passers-by on the play behaviour? What external objects would
children bring into the playground and incorporate in their play? To which extend
does the playground actually seduce passers-by to start playing?
Finally, the design method that has been presented in this chapter features 20
dimensions of play that can be considered in the design of an interactive playground.
Since these dimensions originate from an analysis of a large, albeit limited set of
traditional children's games, it is possible that with an even more extensive analysis
more dimensions could be identified. However, it is questionable whether such an
extension would lead to 'better' interactive playground design, since the dimensions
should be considered a design tool, rather than a prescriptive list.
5.8
Conclusions & Recommendations
This chapter presented a novel and systematic design method for interactive play-
grounds based on traditional children's play. Through systematic analysis of a large
number of traditional children's games, a set of 20 dimensions that form the essence
of these traditional games have been distilled. These dimensions allow the designer to
concretise high-level project goals (such as stimulating social interaction, and phys-
ical, partially contained and emergent play) into individual interactions that make up
the core of an interactive playground.
To explore the proposed design method, an example playground was designed,
implemented and evaluated in a user study with 19 children. The results indicate
that the proposed design approach can influence the type of play occurring within a
playground, but that other factors (such as playground size and novelty) may play
an important role as well. Nevertheless, the proposed design method helps bridging
the gap between an interactive playground's abstract goals, and concrete interactions
that influence play behaviour.
