The Playful User

Jonathan Follett asks: "What makes a person want to use one particular digital product or service over its competitor? What makes one user experience more engaging, interesting, or compelling than another?"

He answers for us: "An often overlooked, under-appreciated, and rarely measured component of user experience is playfulness."

Yes, he's talking about "user experience" and playfulness specifically in the context of the design of digital services like Twitter and Flickr.

He defines playfulness in the user experience "...as those elements of a digital design that engage people’s attention or involve them in an activity for recreation, amusement, or creative enjoyment."

"Creative enjoyment." The lad's a definite phrase-turner.

In his article he lists four handy criteria for measuring playability:

• lots of small rewards and positive feedback for taking action
• no negative consequences for experimentation
• the ability to take someone else’s work and build on it

and my favorite:

• frivolous interaction

"Facebook," he exemplifies, "has perfected digital social interaction for no good reason other than pure fun. All playful applications should have a component of interactive silliness."

Bless his perceptive heart: Creative enjoyment. Frivolous interaction. Interactive silliness. How else could one explain the forces that draw us here to find each other?


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith