This study examines the field of playful design as a tool to affect and enhance the reception of a mundane activity. The management of swapping reusable household goods between neighbors is explored by designing playful components to enhance the experience. A pilot field study was carried out to observe recycling areas, in conjunction to 20 interviews being conducted regarding their point of views on recycling habits and their perception on their own local recycling area. The results show a clear indifferent attitude towards recycling and the environment surrounding the recycling area. However the interviewees were predominantly optimistic to the idea of swapping reusable goods with neighbors for its well-known advantages. Concerns were expressed on the practical efficiency and organization of such an activity, as well as on the shameful label perceived by using pre-used goods. A hybrid mobile application prototype was developed as one suggestion on how to incorporate playful design in a way that takes into consideration the needs and concerns of the users for swapping goods. Future research includes carrying out case studies on such playful applications for the current intended uses to gather insight on how they are utilized by potential users. Relevant are also empirical studies on how playful design as a tool may be used and its impact on users to get rid of perceived negative labels.

This degree work is a project that started out from weaving, which became the founding technique for how a modular textile took its shape, woven together as interlaced parts. Modularity was taken into this work in order to avoid a flat result and give the woven textile playful attributes and multiple functions. By using bold colours and layers in weaving, an investigation of the interactive and playful side of this textile technique was done. The method was based on workshops where geometrical forms were systematically woven into a repetitive pattern according to the plain weave binding. The result were three voluminous textiles with a given hierarchy of colours and material as they were placed at different levels. Practically, it is a textile that can be fitted to different spaces by being either diminished or built out, in order to be interactive. The quantity of elements within the textiles became the essence and the quality in the project and the advantage is that it is a textile that can be made from waste.

This research is an investigation into the playful aspects of designed products. Defining playfulness in products, besides and beyond utilitarian functions and aesthetics, is at the heart of this thesis. In product design research, playfulness, this indispensable element of our mediated world, is either superficially limited to visual seduction or entangled with new technologies that it seems as if play appears as peripheral. The main objective of this research, therefore, is to understand how play can be embodied within a product at the design stage. The research has been supported by a considerable body of literature on the definition of play, product reviews and qualitative fieldwork studies. The fieldwork and ethnographic research was conducted in three stages. First, a series of semi-structured interviews were carried out with second-year product design students at the Edinburgh College of Art. The aim was to examine their understanding of the playful aspects in their own interactive design. The second stage was a series of focus group discussions held with women over the age of 65 to explore how they understand and interpret playfulness in the context of kitchen appliances, and how the change of functions may affect their attitudes toward the activities of their everyday life. Finally, through using a number of ethnographic research methods, five Edinburgh women, aged between 25 and 35, were observed in their kitchens to assess their style of cooking and the way they interacted with their chosen household products. As a result of these field studies, four main aspects of playfulness in these interactions were discovered: communicative and social aspects, dynamic and bodily engagement, the distractive and immersive quality of play and finally, the ‘self-reflective’ aspects of play. The latter is indebted to the idea of ‘ludification of societies’ proposed by Jos De Mul (2005), who draws attention to the increase of playful activities in Western societies in the 21st century and the emergence of a new state of identity, or ‘ludic identity’. In considering this exploration, I have developed a new framework for the ludo-aesthetics of interaction based on the ‘aesthetics of interaction’ which aims to explain the deeper meanings of playful engagements in product interactions. By defining play and reviewing the possibilities of playfulness in products, I have created a taxonomy of playful products, providing a broad spectrum of play, from visually and functionally playful to more subtle and hidden agendas, which only can be highlighted through the active role of users. The findings to emerge from this study are, firstly, playfulness in product design is not an emotion elicited from using a product but rather is a mode, with a broad range of interactions, from objective to subjective, and from personal to social. Second, to assign any attribute of playfulness to a product without considering the contribution of the user, the socio-cultural environment of use and the reflective and constructive interactions of users with products is reductive and superficial. In order to make these findings more tangible for designers and students in product design, I have visualised four food-related scenarios by imaginative personas based on the observations I made in the course of the fieldwork. In addition, I have drawn upon the term ‘replay’ (normally associated with gaming) to demonstrate that playfulness can occur through recalling the objects of the past, the culture of reusing and recycling, and retro style. In essence, this PhD sets the parameters of what designers should be aware of while dealing with people’s playful interactions with products. It is my belief that such awareness, as a complementary element of aesthetic interactions, will help designers to expand their territory of research and widen their scope for design practices.

The growing number of video gamers over the age of fifty has sparked new interests in the transformative power of play and consequently, video games, for a larger demographic of citizens. Researchers have found that digital gaming can have positive effects on the physical, psychological and cognitive well-being of older adults. Of particular interest to this thesis is the potential of games to facilitate social connections between different generations of players. Intergenerational games have focused on improving relations between younger people and older adults by providing enjoyable interactions that can impart cognitive and physical benefits. While previous work has focused on enhancing intergenerational social connections between relatives, non-familial intergenerational encounters have scarcely been explored. Games often feature asymmetrical participation and require long term interest, all factors that can prove challenging to implement for public non-kin intergenerational gameplay. Previous works have shown that the successful use of games is dependent on a number of psychosocial and contextual factors that shape the player experience. One of them is the degree of familiarity between players. Familiarity has been linked to many of the core motivations associated with intergenerational play, exposing doubts of whether the same motivations can be used to inform the design of intergenerational games between strangers of different ages. In addition, for most socio-technical interventions designed for older adults, the characteristics of seniors have predominantly been framed around accessibility and decline. This limited perspective also tends to be true when discussing games designed for seniors. Finally, existing research on games for seniors has mainly focused on seniors who play conventional video games and self-identify as gamers, further marginalizing seniors who do not fit these descriptions. The current design of intergenerational games might not be ready for adoption by the broader society. In response to these gaps, this thesis presents a research through design project aimed to investigate how a general population of older people (who may not be composed of video-gamers) perceive and experience game and play, and map this knowledge to promising playful approaches of intergenerational encounters while at the same time promoting a positive image of older adults as active and sociable members of society. The methodology featured a participatory approach that involved interview studies, co-design workshops, and playtests that helped to articulate the general requirements for an intergenerational game to be played in public spaces. The result of these formative exercises produced Klang Verbindet (“Sound Connects”), an interactive playful system that supports embodied interaction and group exploration of spaces. Designed to be played through body movements, the system employs vision-based algorithms and sound synthesis to provide an age- agnostic space for public play. Interactions with the system were evaluated in two different public contexts, using direct observations, semi-structured group interviews, and post-game questionnaires. Based on these data and the design and implementation of the system, the thesis describes a number of important factors to be considered when designing and evaluating games for non-familial intergenerational interaction. The most important being, to design for short-term and low-entry engagements which are defined as “low-threshold intergenerational encounters”. Within this space, the thesis discusses the distinctive value of - ambiguity, appropriation, and curiosity as drivers of gameplay for rapid mixed-aged encounters in the public context.

In this thesis, an improved framework is proposed for categorizing existing gamified systems. Related works and real world examples of gamification are discussed and some areas where insufficient research exists. In order to address the identified research problems, an experimental gamified system was designed and implemented for sharing articles related to different aspects of life. The participants of the study were recruited among the users of an existing Iranian lifestyle site for female users. Therefore, the gender of the users was considered in the design. A wide range of gamification elements were implemented in the system to test the effectiveness of specific design features and gamification elements’ parameters in increasing user motivation, for example, the contingency of rewards and the use of sound and animation in badges. A detailed questionnaire was used to answer the research questions. The results suggest specific combinations of gamification elements and their parameters that can be successfully applied by designers of social sites for similar audience.