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Making Smart Cities More Playable pp 207–234Cite as

The DigiPhysical Playscape

Part of the Gaming Media and Social Effects book series (GMSE)

Abstract

Children’s outdoor play is fluent and fluctuating, shaped by environmental features and conditions. We present insights gathered through a series of field studies in which interaction designers and landscape architects worked together to fuse their knowledge into working solutions for integrating interactive play in outdoor environments. These implementations of interactive play technology have been installed as an integral part of outdoor environments in housing areas and at schoolyards, and have been evaluated with children. The interplay between technology and the environment that are partly natural forest and partly constructed playground will be discussed. We highlight in particular how the interactive technology contributes to the versatility of play activities, but also how the nature setting and the availability of natural materials contribute to the play activities around the interactive artefacts.

Keywords

  • Outdoor play
  • Interactive play
  • Natural material
  • Sensors
  • Actuators
  • Play value

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Notes

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    https://www.cypcs.org.uk/rights/uncrc.

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    https://www.minecraft.net.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank all personnel at the municipality organisations, schools and pre-schools that we have collaborated with that made it possible to build and evaluate the installations at the five different locations during five years in the DigiPhys project. Without their strong engagement this work could not have been performed. We also thank all partners from industry and municipality that contributed with invaluable insights and dedicated work in the project over the five-year period. This work was funded by Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Institute of Technology, 10044, Stockholm, Sweden

    Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander

  2. Uppsala University, Box 513, 75120, Uppsala, Sweden

    Jon Back & Annika Waern

  3. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Almas Allé 8, 75007, Uppsala, Sweden

    Susan Paget

Authors
  1. Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander
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  2. Jon Back
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  3. Annika Waern
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  4. Susan Paget
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Prof. Dr. Anton Nijholt

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Sallnäs Pysander, EL., Back, J., Waern, A., Paget, S. (2020). The DigiPhysical Playscape. In: Nijholt, A. (eds) Making Smart Cities More Playable. Gaming Media and Social Effects. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9765-3_10

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