Public Play: accessible and freely interpretable, but out of the spotlight.

Xu et al. (2011) found that rules are a critical aspect for social interactions among games. Whether the players don’t like the specific rules or have to discuss what the exact meaning is, people are engaged to talk to each other and find out what adjustment or interpretation of the rule seems the most suitable for the occasion. The researchers emphasize on the need for rule interpretation in order to facilitate social interactions, which is also practically verified by the study of Tieben et al. (2011).  From these articles it can be concluded that playful interaction for public spaces as analyzed by Tieben et al. (2011) should be interesting and appealing for people, but leaving out any specific rules or restricted guidelines how to interact with the playful interactions since this creates more opportunities for discussions and personal input about the interactional meaning itself.

The importance of turn-taking as mentioned by Xu et al. (2011) may not be compatible for public play though. Taking turns might be good for obvious players which already agreed to play a game, but in public the positive effect of being in the spotlight might turn into the negative spotlight effect; people feeling watched and are afraid of embarrassment (Gilovich et al., 2000). So in public, it might suit a person better to join in continuous interaction, with a lower threshold of commitment and attention. This way there will be less anxiety which could result in avoidance of any possible negative attention by joining the interaction. Another aspect that could improve joining the interaction is a low threshold and independent interaction time; people may join or leave as they please. I think the piano stairs is a nice example where people can stay as long as they want, are not put in a spotlight but still enjoy the playful aspect that regular stairs lack.

Applied successfully, public stimulation of play can have a big impact on physical activity as well. It appears to be the case that little movements are already a big step in energy consumption, relatively to sedentary activity like watching television (Fujiki et al., 2008). Besides the regular sport activities, Fujiki et al. explored a new field of activity level that has a lower threshold than exercising but largely “outperforms” sitting: the so-called non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Examples of these activities are walking, taking the stairs, but also less obvious activities like chewing gum.  So playful persuasive interactions only need to get people out of their chairs to be successful for that matter. This also creates an interesting field for application; places where people sit a lot like offices, airports or restaurants.

Sources:

Fujiki, Y., Kazakos, K., Puri, C., Buddharaju, P., Pavlidis, I., & Levine, J. (2008). NEAT-o-Games: blending physical activity and fun in the daily routine. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 6(2), 21.

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 78(2), 211.

Tieben, R., Sturm, J., Bekker, T., & Schouten, B. (2014). Playful persuasion: Designing for ambient playful interactions in public spaces. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 6(4), 341-357.

Xu, Y., Barba, E., Radu, I., Gandy, M., & MacIntyre, B. (2011). Chores are fun: Understanding social play in board games for digital tabletop game design. In Think design play: The fifth international conference of the digital research association (DIGRA) (Vol. 16).

lopend pianospelen: voor jong en oud.