While digital play installations for outdoor use are becoming more common, little work has been done on how such technology shapes play in nature-rich environments. We performed a study of children's self-directed play with access to nature as well as digital installations. Our findings show that play with nature materials and digital installations emerged in different ways. Most notably, imaginative play was observed emerging in close interaction with nature, while the digital installations mostly inspired rule-based play. Furthermore, engagement with digital installations typically involved an active exploration phase which was not observed with nature materials. Nature materials instead engaged the children's senses more immediately, and often offered opportunities for collection and consumption, paving way for fluent play activities roaming large areas. We argue that these differences motivate rethinking the design of digital installations for play in nature and suggest guidelines to this purpose.

Live action roleplay (larp) has a wide range of applications and can be relevant in relation to HCI. While there has been research about larp in relation to topics such as embodied interaction, playfulness, and futuring published in HCI venues since the early 2000s, there is not yet a compilation of this knowledge. In this article, we synthesize knowledge about larp and larp-adjacent work within the domain of HCI. We present a practitioner overview from an expert group of larp researchers, the results of a literature review, and highlight particular larp research exemplars which all work together to showcase the diverse set of ways that larp can be utilized in relation to HCI topics and research. This article identifies the need for further discussions toward establishing best practices for utilizing larp in relation to HCI research, as well as advocating for increased engagement with larps outside academia.

Location-based games are highly dependent on the physical environment. One important but often overlooked factor is weather. In this paper we focus on winter weather, as this is a common weather that is often not designed for specifically. By performing a qualitative observation, interview, and questionnaire study of families during and after playing a GPS-based mobile game in a winter setting, this paper studies how winter conditions affected the gaming experience. Three main factors were observed to have a big impact on the gaming experience: snow, ice and cold. We outline ways these weather conditions were found to be both obstacles, and adding value to the game. Finally, we suggest design implications for winter weather, mainly; the need for short games due to cold, adaption of gameplay for movement in snow, to avoid interactions based on handling the phone, and to adapt maps to the effects of snow and ice. By explaining how winter conditions affect the gaming experience, location-based games can be better adapted for these weather conditions, and thereby help in making better design decisions.

Concepts and theories that emerge within the social sciences tend to be nuanced, dealing with complex social phenomena. While their relevance to design could be high, it is difficult to make sense of them in design projects, especially when participants have a variety of backgrounds. We report on our experiences using role-play scenarios as a way to sensitize heterogeneous designer teams to complex theoretical concepts related to museology as social and cultural phenomena. We discuss design requirements on such scenarios, and the importance of connecting their execution closely to the context of the design and the current stage of the design process.

Outdoor play is becoming an increasingly marginalised activity in the urban landscape. Even in HCI, research on interactive solutions for outdoor play has largely been limited to special areas and in particular playgrounds. But children play everywhere, and especially play close to home is central in children's play activities. In this article we draw upon knowledge about designing for children's play in interaction design as well as in landscape architecture, to study how interactive play installations can be integrated in outdoor environments of a residential area. We present a field study in which digitally enhanced play installations were installed, in dialogue with the landscape, in between the buildings of a residential area. We focus on how emerging play activities made use of the installations as well as of the surrounding landscape in expected as well as unexpected ways. Based on the observations, we discuss how residential play is special, and how this affects how to design for it.

In the turn towards practice-oriented research in interaction design, one of the most important proposals has been the emphasis on the 'ultimate particulars' produced by design, as embodiments of design knowledge. In current HCI research, those particulars are almost always taken to be 'things' artefacts or singular systems. We argue that this emphasis may have come at a cost that can be described as a loss of identity; interaction design research was never primarily concerned with the design of artefacts, but with how humans act and interact with each other with and through artefacts. We propose a complementary perspective by looking at design projects and traditions where the 'ultimate particulars' can be considered to be activities rather than things. The article is concerned with how knowledge needs to be articulated in the scholarly engagement with such design practices. We argue that engagement with activity-centric design gets design research one step closer towards understanding salient contemporary design practices and what Buchanan calls 'environmental design'.

During the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in supporting social play through the design of collocated digital games, alongside efforts to better understand social-physical modes of play. In this paper, we present relevant insights from a well-established gaming community, the larp (Live Action Role Play) community. This community has a longstanding tradition of making use of costumes, physical environments, and objects to shape player experience. We conducted a survey completed by 39 larpers concerning how they use digital technology in larp, and the way technology is designed and appropriated to augment the larp experience. Here, we present early results in the form of a preliminary taxonomy of technologies in larps, as well as key trends for design, use, and appropriation of technology to impact in-game social and emotional experience.

Numerous studies have foregrounded how play is only partially shaped by the artifacts that their designers design. The play activity can change the structures framing it, turning players into co-designers through the mere act of playing. This article contributes to our understanding of how we can design for play taking into account that play has this transformative power. We describe four ways that players can engage with framing structures, which we classify in terms of whether players conform to explore, transgress, or (re)create them. Through the examples of three case studies, we illustrate how this model has been useful in design: as an analytical tool for deconstructing player behavior, to articulate design goals and support specific design choices, and for shaping the design process.

Children's outdoor play is fluent and fluctuating, shaped by environmental features and conditions. The article reports on a project where interaction designers and landscape architects work together to fuse their knowledge into working solutions for integrating interactive play in outdoor environments. We report on a schoolyard trial, where interactive play technology was installed as an integral part of a schoolyard environment, and discuss the interplay between technology and the environment that was partly natural forest and partly constructed playground. We highlight in particular the importance of the adaptability of the natural environment, how the combination of interactive technology and natural environment can contribute to the versatility of play activities, and how the interactive technology can both be useful for presenting invitations to play in such adaptable places, and enhance the adaptability for play in otherwise impoverished places.

The DigiFys project explores the design of interactive landscapes for children's outdoor play. The project combines landscape architecture with design of interactive technology, working towards designs that support children in their everyday play activity, close to home. In the creative lab session, we want to co-design the play landscape together with local children. The focus is on acquiring a perspective on similarities and differences between the children's play culture in Sweden where the project originates, and Malaysia.