Abstract
Children’s outdoor play is fluent and fluctuating, shaped by environmental features and conditions. We present insights gathered through a series of field studies in which interaction designers and landscape architects worked together to fuse their knowledge into working solutions for integrating interactive play in outdoor environments. These implementations of interactive play technology have been installed as an integral part of outdoor environments in housing areas and at schoolyards, and have been evaluated with children. The interplay between technology and the environment that are partly natural forest and partly constructed playground will be discussed. We highlight in particular how the interactive technology contributes to the versatility of play activities, but also how the nature setting and the availability of natural materials contribute to the play activities around the interactive artefacts.
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Acknowledgements
We want to thank all personnel at the municipality organisations, schools and pre-schools that we have collaborated with that made it possible to build and evaluate the installations at the five different locations during five years in the DigiPhys project. Without their strong engagement this work could not have been performed. We also thank all partners from industry and municipality that contributed with invaluable insights and dedicated work in the project over the five-year period. This work was funded by Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency.
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Sallnäs Pysander, EL., Back, J., Waern, A., Paget, S. (2020). The DigiPhysical Playscape. In: Nijholt, A. (eds) Making Smart Cities More Playable. Gaming Media and Social Effects. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9765-3_10
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