INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DESIGNING PLEASURABLE PRODUCTS AND INTERFACES, DPPI09 13- 16 OCTOBER 2009, COMPIEGNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, COMPIEGNE, FRANCE Hannu Korhonen1, Markus Montola1,2, Juha Arrasvuori1 1 Nokia Research, P.O. Box 1000, 00045 Nokia Group, Finland {hannu.j.korhonen, juha.arrasvuori}@nokia.com 2 University of Tampere, Kanslerinrinne 1, 33014 Tampereen Yliopisto, Finland markus.montola@uta.fi UNDERSTANDING PLAYFUL USER EXPERIENCE THROUGH DIGITAL GAMES ABSTRACT It has been commonly acknowledged that the acceptance of a product depends on both its utilitarian and non-utilitarian properties. The non-utilitarian properties can elicit generally pleasurable and particularly playful experiences in the product���s users. Product design needs to improve the support of playful experiences in order to fit in with the users��� multi-faceted needs. However, designing for fun and pleasure is not an easy task, and there is an urgent need in user experience research and design practices to better understand the role of playfulness in overall user experience of the product. In this paper, we present an initial framework of playful experiences which are derived from studies in interactive art and videogames. We conducted a user study to verify that these experiences are valid. We interviewed 13 videogame players about their experiences with games and what triggers these experiences. The results indicate that the players are experiencing the videogames in many different ways which can be categorized using the framework. We propose that the framework could help the design of interactive products from an experience point of view and make them more engaging, attractive, and most importantly, more playful for the users. Keywords: Playfulness, Playful User Experience, Design, Digital Game, Interactive Product, Videogame 1 INTRODUCTION We live in an experience economy where consumers constantly seek new kinds of experiences from the products they use. Focusing on effectiveness and efficiency of the user is often considered to be an adequate design goal for the success of a product or a service. This indicates designer focus on usability testing when developing a product. However, Hassenzahl et al. argue that when evaluating the perceived quality of the interactive product, both pragmatic and hedonic attributes should be evaluated [15]. HCI researchers have argued that product design should not only concentrate on improving effectiveness and efficiency, but designers should think about how users experience the product and how to design something that is pleasurable to use [19]. As Norman states: ���technology should bring more to peoples��� lives than the improved performance of the tasks: it should add richness and enjoyment��� [25, p.111]. Moreover, positive emotions are essential for the sake of curiosity and ability to learn new things [25], and thus, for using the product more frequently. Jordan has proposed a hierarchical concept of utility, usability, and pleasure to fulfill consumer needs [19]. Shneiderman also points out that user interface and interaction designers should seek ways of increasing fun aspects in products [32]. In order to better understand what we mean by interactive products producing playful experiences, the reader should consider Nokia Sports Tracker, Flickr��, Tumblr, Google Earth, Facebook, and even Wikipedia as examples of such products. User experience has been studied for some time in the HCI domain and researchers have proposed various models to cover different aspects of it. User experience of a product is personal, implicating that a user���s skills, knowledge, previous experiences of similar products, and expectations will affect to the user���s perception of the new product [21]. User experience consists of experiences that are elicited when the user interacts with the product and emotions and feelings that are result of interactions [8, 30]. The interaction occurs always in some physical and social context and therefore, 274

context has impact on user experience [e.g. 11, 16, 24]. Understanding users, tasks, and the context in which the product is used, are critical issues of the success of the product design. User experience has often been described with attributes such as fun, joy, and pleasure [14], suggesting that design should focus on user���s enjoyment. Even though many researchers have emphasized the importance of non-functional aspects in product design, there have only been isolated studies [e.g. 31, 38, 41] on playful experiences in the interaction design of products such as email clients. These studies have concentrated on audiovisual enhancements, layout, or navigation with very little functional changes or new content. Furthermore, there are other studies which have analyzed playfulness from a theoretical point of view and tried to understand how it appears in interactive products and what affects the playfulness [39, 40]. Despite of these efforts, there is very little knowledge of what these playful experiences actually are. HCI researchers seem to have mostly ignored a vast domain of products, namely videogames that offer playful and pleasurable experiences for the users. Videogames have been a popular form of entertainment for more than three decades. In many people���s minds, videogames have set the levels of excellence for interactive products. We feel that videogames provide an interesting field for studying how to design products which aim at providing enjoyable, pleasurable and playful experiences to a user. In addition, videogames introduce novel interaction solutions that may be used in utilitarian products as well [9]. Pagulayan et al. address the main differences between videogames and utilitarian products [26]. According to them, a utilitarian product is a tool and the design intention is to make tasks easier, more efficient, less error-prone, and increase the quality of the results. Videogames, instead, are intended to be pleasurable to play and sufficiently challenging. In this paper, we present an initial framework of playful user experiences which are derived from a study conducted by Costello and Edmonds [6]. We have extended their categories with the results from several game studies to make the framework more complete and usable outside the interactive art context. We conducted a user study to verify that these experiences are real, and for that purpose, we interviewed videogame players to learn what kinds of experiences appear when they are playing videogames. We present the results from the study and propose that these categories could be applied in the design of interactive products to make them more engaging, attractive, and most importantly, more playful for the users. 2 RELATED WORK In this section, we describe some of the earlier work that has studied playfulness. When we look at the definitions of ���playful��� proposed by different scholars, we begin to appreciate the broad scope of experiences that can be considered playful. Even the concept of play itself has been, and still is even after a more than a century of studies, an elusive concept with a multitude of diverging (and sometimes converging) theories, definitions and approaches. Sutton-Smith [35] in his Ambiguity of Play tries ���to bring some coherence to the ambiguous field of play theory by suggesting that some of the chaos to be found there is due to the lack of clarity about the popular cultural rhetoric that underlie the various play theories and play terms.��� Sutton-Smith proposed the following: 1. The rhetoric of play as progress which states that animals and children adapt and develop during play in order to prepare for the adult life. 2. The rhetoric of play as fate where the choices and outcomes of our actions are dictated by destiny, luck or whatever. 3. The rhetoric of play as power which sees play as a representation of conflict and as a way to establish and enforce the power status of the winning players. 4. The rhetoric of play as identity as ���a means of confirming, maintaining, or advancing the power and identity of the community of players��� [35, p.10]. 5. The rhetoric of play as the imaginary as applied to creativity and ���playful improvisation��� in arts and other aspects of life. 6. The rhetoric of self where the focus is on the enjoyment or fun aspect of the participating players themselves. 7. The rhetoric of play as frivolous as in cases where play is regarded as something unnecessary, even foolish. 275