Children designing playful interactivity; theories of play and childhood coming into the game design space

It has long been a tradition in the Child Computer Interaction Community to engage with children in the design of their own products and games. The engagement of whole schoolclasses of children, in the design of games and products has been a feature of our work for several years and a suite of methods, including the Bluebells method and Obstructed Theatre have been developed to facilitate this process. Traditionally children have spent an hour or so in facilitated design sessions, beginning with a set of requirements, and then have created ideas and inspirations for products and games on the basis that they are `native´ informants. Defining play as `the spontaneous self initiated and self-regulated activity of young children which is relatively risk free - and not necessarily goal oriented´ - the specification of requirements for children to design in this space was identified as being problematic especially as it pertains to children designing playful serious games. This work begins a debate into how children can design for play by using personas of characters, derived from an understanding of theories of childhood and theories of play. The technique (TheoryAnimals) is described and its operation within a design session with young children is explained. The study shows that children can design playful interactive products and that the TheoryAnimals technique has potential to inspire children to think of how play could be designed for different situations and contexts, The work concludes with ideas for future uses and further refinements of the technique.