Inspirations from Bill Gaver - Designing for Homo Ludens

Homo Ludens - human defined as playful creatures (Huizinga, J., 1950).

As we toy with things and ideas, as we chat and daydream, we find new perspectives and new ways to create, new ambitions, relationships, and ideals. Play goes well beyond entertainment: it's a serious business.

Telegotchi was an electronic pet with no buttons that relied on psionic communication for happiness.

Each case raises issues around the possibilities for inter-generational communication, to the ethics of taming nature.

We aim to design for Homo Ludens by allowing room for people to appropriate technologies. Playing involves pursuing one's inner narratives in safe situations, through perceptual projection, or ideally, action. If computational devices channel people's activities and perceptions too closely, then people have to live out of somebody else' story, not their own (c.f. Wejchert, 2001).

Of course, our final and most important inspiration from Gaver is the importance of:- pleasure before performance, and engagement before clarity. We aim to design for Homo Ludens by focusing on the intrigue and delight at all levels of design, from the aesthetics of form and interaction, to functionality, to conceptual implications at psychological, social and cultural levels.