Designing for playful experiences in open-ended intelligent play environments.

This paper describes an explorative study with an open-ended play environment. An initial interactive design, called FlowSteps, was developed for children aged 7-8 years old. This design was aimed at supporting the playful experiences of curiosity, exploration, challenge, fellowship and competition during three different stages of play: invitation, exploration and immersion. FlowSteps was evaluated with twenty children playing in pairs with the design. Results show evidence of the playful experiences supported by a variety of design elements over the three stages of play. We propose that these insights can help the development of playful, interactive designs for open-ended play.