Playfulness

How do you make kids do boring stuff they absolutely don't want to do? Things like brush their teeth, pick up their toys or go shopping. For me the solution is often about turning the boring stuff into something playful, something more like a game. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking along those lines since our world is full of examples of products and services designed with playfulness and games in mind. Not just to appeal to kids but also to attract the attention, engage and change the behaviour of boring grown-ups like you and me.

For example Nike+ with it's challenges and gamelike environment finally made me enjoy running. Geocaching, a gps-based game which lets participants hide and seek treasures in the real world, made me excited about going out and play with my kids. No more sitting by the sandbox fiddling with my phone. Now the phone is our magical treasure map!

The most noteable example in the last couple of weeks has been the popular Volkswagen campaign The fun theory with it's Piano stairs video that puts a smile on my face:

This Friday I'm attending Playful 09, a one-day event all about games and play – in all their manifestations, throughout the contemporary media landscape. I'm looking forward to learn from the people that have created things such as Alice and Kev - The story of being homeless in The Sims 3, How to worry friends and inconvenience people, Bus-Tops - A project to transform Londons Bus journeys, Daytum - collect, categorize and communicate your everyday data, Kidmapped and a lot more.

From my perspective, it's important that we start to look at aspects of playfulness in our products. Being easy to use or usable is no longer enough. Adding playfulness and fun is one way of making our products more relevant and engaging. Next time I'll hopefully have some new examples of playful media products and ideas for how to create them. Until then I leave you with Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea:

Emil Ovemar
Director, User Experience
Bonnier R&D