A Preliminary Design Vocabulary for Interactive Urban Play: Analysing and Composing Design Configurations for Playful Digital Placemaking

In the contemporary re-configuration of cities, interactive technology has become a prevailing enabler of play in shared spaces. It expands the physical and social affordances of the urban environment and provides new means to facilitate playful activities for the general public. Despite a wealth of scholarly and practice work, most of the existing literature lacks systematic consideration of interactive technology implementation combined with the rethinking of urban affordances as a strategy for playful digital placemaking. Through the analysis of literature and design precedents, we put forward a definition for the concept of interactive urban play, and a set of design configuration types that surfaced from recurring properties. We propose a preliminary design vocabulary based on the analysis to help think through potential configurations for interactive urban play ideas and solutions.