Designing for Fun

While in the Netherlands, I had the opportunity to make an informal, after lunch presentation to participants in the University of Delft's Studiolab. Since they were all involved in industrial design, I thought that they would enjoy talking about the design-fun connection. It turned out more fun and more relevant to their immediate concerns as designers and researchers than I had imagined possible.

Here's how I described my presentation:

The aspects of consumer products that make them "fun" are becoming increasingly significant determining factors in their success. Even such a utilitarian device as a cell phone, with all its increasingly varied features (call forwarding, memory, voice dialing, conferencing) can’t compete with a cell phone that also has a library of downloadable ring tones, the ability to take and send photos, and, of course, play games.

This observation leads to some significant (if not "serious") design questions, like:
~ What is fun?
~ What makes something fun?
~ What keeps it that way?

In this talk Bernie will be discussing some of the theory behind his explorations of fun. In particular, he'll be expounding on Csikszentmihaly’s concept of "flow" and its relevance to our understanding of the social, as well as the psychological dynamics of the experience of fun. Bernie will introduce the concept of "coliberation," his extension of Csikszentmihalyi's model which can be used to describe the social, or relational components of the experience of fun.