6. productive play
6
Today I’m going to be talking about productive play
7. 7
We begin to play at an early age. Play allows us to learn about
ourselves, and our environment. We learn about social systems, and
are able to build, construct and experiment, much like the iterative
design process. A lot of research has been done into children and
play. But do we ever really stop playing?
8. playful experiences
in non-playful contexts
8
Most of what we do professionally does not include any form of
formal play. Yet play is coming back into our lives in a big way, even
though we may not realize it. Today I hope to uncover a lot of these
playful experiences and explain why play is important.
9. visceral allure
9
The play I describe today can be called a visceral allure, an
emotional connection we have with an application or context. What
do I mean?
10. 10
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the pull-to-refresh gesture in
iOS. This feature has been baked into iOS 6, and by using some
simple physics, the system feels like you’re pulling apart a water
droplet or piece of silly putty.
11. animation
AM
11
Another example is the animation of scrolling up to the top of the
page when one taps on the status bar on iOS.
12. what’s so alluring?
12
These are two really simple design patterns built into the mobile OS,
and in and of themselves have barely anything to do with games or
play, but yet it’s hard to argue that these small details are not
playful. This is really similar to Dan’s talk on Microinteractions
yesterday. These things feel good. Why?
13. 13
Well these design patterns are a sort of wayfinding. They bring the
system to life and reflect the real world in a virtual environment.
14. 14
It makes us feel more connected to the system, because now we feel
like we can reach out and grab it. We understand context. The
system is approachable.
15. 15
Let’s look at another example. Siri, the now ubiquitous personal
assistant. Most of the time, Siri works as a simple question-and-
answer style system. You ask for information, it gives it to you.
16. 16
But sometimes, the unexpected happens. Siri talks back and
becomes playful. Siri has a personality. She’s actually pretty sassy.
Why did Apple go through the trouble of baking this in? They clearly
spent a lot of time on it. They didn’t necessarily need to. Why did
they do it?
17. 17
Well, it’s because we’re human. We like to engage with the world on
many levels; the emotional level being one of them. Siri’s quips
humanizes the experience of working with this otherwise soulless
system, and allows us to reflect our own humanness onto the device
we are interacting with, ultimately bringing us closer to it. Isn’t this
a beautiful use of play,something seemingly frivolous having great
emotional utility?
18. self-actualization
esteem
love / belonging
safety
physiological
18
We can think of this playfulness as a parallel to maslow’s hierarchy
of needs, a layer-cake style approach to the things we need as
humans.
19. usability
reliability
functionality
19
In the context of application design, we have a similar tiered
approach of function, reliability and usability, but what about the
emotional factors of engaging with an application?
20. play?
usability
reliability
functionality
20
Taking from some research by Aarron Walter, perhaps play is the
level that sits with usability, and actually lets us connect with the
system emotionally.
Aarron Walter http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/emotional-interface-
design-the-gateway-to-passionate-users
21. 21
We as humans are built on these notions of affection, connection,
and intimacy. Play brings these elements back into the things we do,
and helps to remind us that we’re alive.
22. 22
Much like a schoolyard ball, the patterns of play are not solutions,
they are simply tools to be used in a context that the human
chooses to use.
23. 23
We really never stop engaging with objects in our world in this
context. The Twine which was released a few months ago is a
connected object with sensors and triggers. Much like the ball, it
was left very open ended to allow it’s users to experiment and figure
out the Twine’s utility.
24. 24
You might think that as we grow and develop, we lose our sense of
play, and maybe that’s true to a certain degree. However, I argue
that we never lose the elements of play that make our life
meaningful, like discovery, self-actualization, and social interaction.
Ultimately these two images are essentially the same activity with
different tools. Play isn’t dead, it’s all around us and it is what
makes us human.
25. Ari Zilnik
ari@zilnik.com
http://ari.zilnik.com
25
