Content uploaded by Ernest A. Edmonds
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ernest A. Edmonds
Content may be subject to copyright.
A Study in Play, Pleasure and Interaction Design
Brigid Costello1 and Ernest Edmonds2
1School of English, Media and Performing Arts University of New South Wales, Sydney,
NSW 2052, Australia. 2Creativity and Cognition Studios, University of Technology, Sydney,
PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia.
bm.costello@unsw.edu.au, ernest@ernestedmonds.com
Abstract. This paper focuses on the design of pleasurably playful interfaces
within an interactive art context. It describes the development of a framework of
thirteen pleasures of play and outlines the application of this framework during
the design process of three interactive artworks. These processes included both
initial conceptual development stages and later user evaluation studies. The pa-
per compares the artist’s view of the pleasures that might be experienced in each
work with the actual pleasures experienced by users during evaluation sessions.
The results suggest that the pleasure framework is a useful tool to aid in the de-
sign of playful interfaces.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
A.0 [GENERAL]: Conference Proceedings
H.5.2: User interfaces, User-centered design
Keywords: Play, Pleasure, User experience
1 Introduction
A stereotypical view of artists characterizes them as creative visionaries, free from the
real-world constraints of usability that shape much other design work. While for some
artists there is still truth in this view, it is a false description for many of those working
in the field of interactive art. This type of art is primarily about creating an experience
for its audience, who must adopt an active role in order for this experience to occur.
Part of the design process of interactive art, therefore, often involves considering how
to motivate an audience so that they will interact and engage with the artwork. This
need to provoke active reception has made it more common for interactive artists to
take a user-centered approach to the process of designing artworks. In doing so, some
artists have borrowed or adapted user evaluation methods from design, HCI and social
science research. Thus, although the work of interactive artists and designers are often
still quite different in terms of aims and outcomes, in some cases their methods of
practice are becoming increasingly similar.
The Creativity and Cognition Studios (CCS) at the University of Technology, Syd-
ney is a research group that has been established to study these changes in the nature
of interactive art practice. Its members focus on researching creative collaborations,
creativity support and interactive art experience. The research described here stems
from the latter area of focus and is part of a larger practice-based study examining
strategies for stimulating play behaviors in interactive art audiences. This research is
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or
commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.
To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute
to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, Helsinki, Finland
© 2007 ACM ISBN 978-1-59593-942-5/07/10…$5.00
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
77
being conducted by interactive artist Brigid Costello under the supervision of Profes-
sor Ernest Edmonds. This paper describes an evaluative user study that was conducted
on three different interactive artworks all created by Brigid Costello1.
This project began with the hypothesis that stimulating playful audience behavior
might be a way of achieving a deep level of audience engagement. Interactive artists
dread the type of audience participant who spends very little time with their work and
who then says, “that they ‘got it’ but that it didn’t ‘do much’.” [14]. Much interactive
art focuses on producing an experience together with audience participants and “get-
ting it”, in the sense of understanding a message, is not really the point. It is important,
however, for audience participants to engage with and explore an artwork in order to
experience it fully. Engagement and exploration both occur during playful behavior
and this link lead to play being chosen as a research focus here.
The processes of exploration are seen as a precursor to playful behavior. Through
exploration the unfamiliar becomes familiar and it is then that play occurs [11]. Studies
of playful behavior report an oscillation between these states of exploration and play
with the player switching back and forth between the explorative goal “what can this
object do” and the playful goal “what can I do with this object” [10]. Player boredom
is the common trigger for the switch back to exploration with the player then seeking
new features or possibilities to play with. The interplay between these two goals has
also been seen to occur when an audience participant encounters an interactive artwork
[5]. While an interactive art experience will always involve a level of explorative un-
familiarity, it may not necessarily lead to playful familiarity2. If it does, however, the
oscillation between play and exploration may drive audiences to experience deeper
levels of engagement with the work. It was for this reason that this project chose to
focus on the stimulation of playful behavior as a key design strategy.
A survey of play theory lead to the development of a framework of thirteen pleasure
categories of play. This paper describes the framework and outlines its application in
the design of three interactive artworks. The framework was used at several different
stages of the design process; during concept development, in mid-stage artist’s reflec-
tions and lastly as part of a formal user evaluation study. The study aimed to discover
whether the pleasure categories that had been designed into the works were actually
experienced by participants. We were also interested in revealing whether the frame-
work could be a useful tool as part of a user evaluation methodology. Lastly, we
wanted to see whether the framework as an evaluation tool would illuminate future
design strategies for each work.
2 The Pleasures of Play
Play can be used to describe a very wide range of experiences and, in keeping with
this, can be defined most broadly as “free movement within a more rigid structure”
[13]. This definition is particularly suited to the interactive art context given its
1 Although Brigid Costello is the primary author of this paper she will, for consistency, use the
third person throughout.
2 Indeed for some artists’ purposes playful familiarity may not be at all desirable.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
78
equally broad range of experiential outcomes. It also suits the experiential aims of this
research project because it echoes the interrelationship between the participant modes
of “what can this object do” (rigid structure) and “what can I do with this object” (free
movement). In order to develop design strategies for stimulating play, however, we
needed to examine the experience of play in more detail. Play is often associated with
pleasurable feelings like joy[11], delight[15] or amusement[4]. Indeed, according to
Groos, whenever “an act is performed solely because of the pleasure it affords, there is
play” [8]. Like Groos, many other theorists have focused on pleasure in their analyses
of play experience. A survey of these different perspectives led us to develop a frame-
work of thirteen categories of play experience that could possibly arouse pleasurable
feelings. The aim was to develop a tool that could be used to aid the experiential de-
sign of artworks that stimulated play behaviors.
Our framework of the thirteen pleasure categories of play was developed as a syn-
thesis of the ideas of six theorists all of whom approach play and pleasure from differ-
ent perspectives. Firstly, the framework was inspired by the theories of philosophers
Karl Groos and Roger Callois whose ideas arose out of their desire to accurately define
a play experience [8, 4]. Secondly, the framework was influenced by the ideas of psy-
chologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who focused on play as a type of pleasurable ex-
perience and psychologist Michael Apter who focused on the stimulation of play [6,
1]. Lastly, the framework drew on the ideas of game designers Pierre Garneau and
Marc LeBlanc who were interested in delineating types of pleasure in games [7, 9].
Table 1 summarizes the ideas used from each theorist and shows how each relates
to the final synthesis of thirteen pleasure categories (rightmost column). Given the
very different objectives of each theorist, the table should not be read as equating all
these ideas although it does point to some consistencies in theme amongst the six. The
various theorists’ ideas were each filtered by the project’s focus on interactive art with
some ideas consequently being given less emphasis in the final framework3. It should
also be noted that the different categories are each capable of arousing displeasure as
much as pleasure. The categories were titled ‘pleasures’, however, because of pleas-
ure’s association with both play and absorption [3]. A participant who experiences
displeasure is liable to become distracted and to stop exploring an artwork. The title is
representative of the project’s focus on stimulating play and also of our desire to en-
courage deep engagement with an artwork.
There are four external factors that are considered to act as modifying variables for
each of the thirteen pleasure categories. Behavioral psychologist Berlyne, like Apter,
focused on the arousal of play. He developed4 four categories that he describes as
discrepancies, which, as the name suggests, arouse play by piquing interest. These four
categories are novelty or change, surprise content, complexity and, lastly, uncertainty
or conflict [2]. These variables, it is suggested, will have an effect on the strength of
the pleasurable feeling that can be evoked by each category in the framework. For
example, a work may be trying to arouse pleasure in creation but this
3 Garneau’s category of advancement and completion, for example, while clearly of great impor-
tance in a game, was considered to be not as important within an interactive art experience
and was subsumed under the final pleasure of competition.
4 Berlyne’s categories were also developed through the work of Heckenhausen.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
79
pleasure will not be felt very strongly if the things that the participant can create are
not perceived to be either novel, or surprising, or complex or unexpected.
Once developed, the robustness of the framework was tested, firstly, by applying it
to a selection of thirty existing interactive artworks. The works chosen were analyzed
from a description rather than an experience but all were works that were widely
known and considered to be successful pieces of playful interactive art. Secondly the
framework was applied to the actual experience of three pieces of existing interactive
art within an exhibition context. These tests resulted in some refinements being made
to the framework particularly to the names used to describe each category. The name
of each pleasure category in the final framework was selected to suit the interactive art
context and also with a view to being used and understood within user evaluations.
Table 1 Summary of theories that contributed to the pleasure framework development. Con-
cepts outlined in bold span more than one pleasure category5.
An outline and description of each of the thirteen pleasure categories contained in
the final framework appears below:
Creation is the pleasure participants get from having the power to create something
while interacting with a work. It is also the pleasure participants get from being able to
express themselves creatively. For example, he or she might feel pleasure at being able
to shape and manipulate a visual element of a work. This pleasure could come from
the aesthetic qualities of the visual creation that he or she makes. It could
5 See chapter 24 of Salen and Zimmerman’s book Rules of Play for a good general overview of
the theories of Callois, Apter and LeBlanc.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
80
equally come from the simple pleasure of feeling in control of the creation of some-
thing.
Exploration is the pleasure participants get from exploring a situation. Because in-
teractive artworks present participants with unfamiliar situations, all will involve some
degree of exploration. However, such exploration might not be pleasurable in some
works while in others it may be a key pleasure. For example, a work might have many
elements that participants can interact with and they might enjoy exploring each one.
Exploration is often linked with the next pleasure, discovery, but not always. Some-
times it is fun to just explore.
Discovery is the pleasure participants get from making a discovery or working
something out. For example, participants may be unsure about the relationship be-
tween their actions and a sound that a work emits and may then feel pleasure when
they realize that a specific action can control that sound. The pleasure of discovery
can also relate to the aesthetic elements in the work. For example, a particular action
may provoke a different sound each time it is performed and participants may get
pleasure from discovering a particularly pleasing sound.
Difficulty is the pleasure participants get from having to develop a skill or to exer-
cise skill in order to do something. An activity can often be more fun if it is not too
easy. For example, hitting a ball against a brick wall can become more pleasurable by
reducing the target to the more difficult task of hitting a specific row of three bricks. In
an artwork pleasurable difficulty might be experienced, for example, in a work that
required participants to co-ordinate a hand gesture with a fast moving object on a
screen. Difficulty might also occur at an intellectual level in works that require a cer-
tain amount of skill to understand them or an aspect of their content. For example, a
work that can be grasped quickly might be less pleasurable than one that is perceived
to be more complex.
Competition is the pleasure participants get from trying to achieve a defined goal.
This could be a goal that is defined by them or it might be one that is defined by the
work. Completing the goal could involve working with or against another human par-
ticipant, a perceived entity within the work, or the system of the work itself. For ex-
ample, a work might require a participant to compete with a fellow participant so that
they can move a visual element to a particular spot and they may get pleasure from
trying to achieve this. In a work where participant movement triggers different sounds
a participant might also experience the pleasure of competition if he or she chooses to
set the goal of trying to trigger as many simultaneous sounds as possible. The pleasure
of competition is often experienced in tandem with the previous pleasure, difficulty.
Danger is the pleasure of participants feeling scared, in danger, or as if they are tak-
ing a risk. This feeling might be as mild as a sense of unease. For example, partici-
pants might feel a pleasurable sense of unease about what a work might do in response
to their actions. It could also be quite a strong feeling. For example, participants might
become very attached to a character represented within a work and feel a pleasurable
thrill of danger when they sense that there is a threat to that character.
Captivation is the pleasure of participants feeling mesmerized or spellbound by
something or of feeling like another entity has control over them. For example, the
sound or vision of a work might captivate participants for a while, making them
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
81
unconscious of their other surroundings. Captivation could also involve participants
enjoying a feeling that a work is controlling or driving their actions.
Sensation is the pleasure participants get from the feeling of any physical action the
work evokes, e.g. touch, body movements, hearing, vocalising etc. For example, inter-
acting with the work may require participants to wave their arms about in a way that is
pleasurable or it may cause them to touch an object that has an enjoyable texture.
Sympathy is the pleasure of sharing emotional or physical feelings with something.
For example, participants might sympathetically feel the movement of a represented
dancing creature or they might sympathetically relate to the emotion represented by a
crying face.
Simulation is the pleasure of perceiving a copy or representation of something from
real life. For example, participants might get pleasure from the way an interaction in a
work simulates the rocking to sleep of a baby.
Fantasy is the pleasure of perceiving a fantastical creation of the imagination. For
example, participants might get pleasure from the representation of a creature that is
made from a blend of human and animal body parts.
Camaraderie is the pleasure of developing a sense of friendship, fellowship or inti-
macy with someone. This could be with another human participant or with a perceived
entity within the work. A work could specifically require or encourage people to inter-
act with each other or it might merely establish an environment that permits social
interaction. For example, in a work where movement triggers visual patterns partici-
pants may experience the pleasure of camaraderie when they create a visual composi-
tion together with another participant. They might also experience the pleasure of
camaraderie in a work that allows them to converse or interact with a virtual character.
Subversion is the pleasure of breaking rules or of seeing others break them. It is also
the pleasure of subverting or twisting the meaning of something or of seeing someone
else do so. For example, a work might require participants to behave in ways that
would be frowned upon in real life and they might get pleasure from being so naughty.
The content of a work might pleasurably subvert a meaning, thing, or relationship
from real life. Participants might also feel subversive pleasure simply from behaving in
ways that they perceive as being “against the rules” of the world set up by a work6.
It should be reiterated that these thirteen pleasures of play are only possible catego-
ries that a participant might feel pleasure in during an interactive art experience. They
may not occur at all and it is even possible that a certain category might cause dis-
pleasure rather than pleasure. It is also expected that the pleasures would very rarely
all occur strongly within a single artwork experience. One trend revealed by the analy-
sis of existing successful artworks was that these artworks elicited strong scores for
just two or three of the pleasure categories, with each work involving a different com-
bination. So it is certainly not being suggested that an artwork that stimulates pleasure
in all of the categories will be successful nor is it being suggested that the framework
has any bearing whatsoever on whether something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art.
6 Although not perceived as such by the audience these behaviors have often been purposely
designed in or at least purposely not designed out by an artist.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
82
What is being suggested is that the framework might be a useful design tool to enable
artists and other designers to think in a more detailed and focused way about the type
of playful experiences that they want their work to elicit.
3 Application of Framework
The final stage of testing the usefulness of the pleasure framework involved its appli-
cation during the design processes of three different interactive artworks. The first two
works were created before the pleasure framework was developed and it, therefore,
played a role only in later evaluative reflections. The third work, however, used the
framework throughout the whole process of its design. All three works were tested
together in a formal user evaluation study that aimed to reveal, amongst other things,
which, if any, of the thirteen pleasure categories were experienced in each work.
This section first outlines the methods of the user evaluation. It then describes each
of the three works and, for each, outlines first the pleasure model developed by the
artist and then the model derived from the user evaluation. The next section goes on to
outline the artist’s reflections on these findings.
3.1 Evaluation Methods
Researchers at the Creativity and Cognition Studios (CCS) have conducted many
investigations into suitable methods for the evaluation of interactive art and the find-
ings of these studies have influenced the methods chosen here. CCS researchers advo-
cate the use of video-cued recall as a data collection method for interactive art evalua-
tions. Their studies show that video-cued recall is able to successfully capture much of
the richness of interactive art experience[5]. Other CCS studies have looked at the use
of expert audiences during the prototype stages of interactive art evaluations. Their
findings suggest that expert audiences can be particularly valuable at this stage of an
artwork’s development because they are often more capable of dealing conceptually
with the unfinished nature of the work[12].
In keeping with the CCS approach, this study collected experiential data using
video-cued recall followed by a short interview. The study took place in a controlled
gallery-like setting and had fifteen participants, eight of whom were classed as expert.
Participants were videoed as they experienced the three artworks in a set rotating or-
der. The video of their experience was then replayed to them and they were asked to
report on what they had been thinking or feeling during their experience. They were
then asked to answer seven set questions. Both the report and the interview were re-
corded on video.
The study used two new methods that have not previously been documented in CCS
publications. The first was to have six of the participants experiencing the artworks in
pairs. In previous studies participants had experienced artworks on their own because
this allowed us to look in detail at individual patterns of interaction. In our observa-
tions of the general public interacting with interactive art, however, we had noticed
that paired interactions were quite common. Those who interacted in pairs seemed to
help each other to figure out the work both intentionally by sharing their
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
83
realizations and unintentionally by providing an interacting body for their partner to
observe. Paired interactions also seemed to perform an important role during the ex-
perience of playful artworks by making participants feel less self conscious and more
able to be socially playful. Having paired interactions, therefore, opened up more pos-
sibilities for participants to experience the pleasure of camaraderie. We used paired
interactions in this study for these reasons but also because two of the artworks in the
study were deliberately designed for multiple users.
The second new method involved surveying each participant about the thirteen
pleasure categories. Mid-way through the interview section of an evaluation session
each participant was asked to fill out a survey sheet and to identify with a tick any of
the thirteen pleasures that they had experienced in each artwork. Participants were
instructed to give a single tick for a category they had felt mild pleasure in and a dou-
ble tick if they felt strong pleasure. They were also told to cross anything that they felt
caused them displeasure. We stressed that the survey was not about describing the
artwork but about describing their personal experience. If they did not experience any
of the categories then participants were told that they shouldn’t tick anything. The
category descriptions that appear earlier in this paper were then read out and partici-
pants filled in the survey. After they had completed the survey they were asked if there
were any comments they wanted to make about the way that they had completed it.
The analysis that this paper describes is based only on the results from the survey
and a small section of the data collected during the interview7. The survey results were
used to develop a model of the key pleasures involved in each work. Next, these mod-
els derived from user experience were compared to models developed earlier by the
artist. Finally, reflection upon these findings and the related interview data resulted in
the identification of future design strategies for each work.
3.2 Elysian Fields
The Elysian Fields interactive was created in 2003 at the very beginning of the re-
search project. It was developed in collaboration with fellow artist Ian Gwilt and used
music created by sound artist Dave Burraston. The work presents participants with an
animated windswept field of abstract grass that covers an entire wall-sized screen.
Moving towards the screen the participant becomes aware that their physical action of
walking in the ‘real’ installation space is being translated into the virtual ‘on-screen’
environment, through the animated squashing of tufts of grass and the triggering of
sound effects. As the user moves around, the grasses that have previously been
squashed slowly grow back in a different shade, triggering a musical tone that blends
with the serene music playing in the background. The screen, which is initially full of
black blades of grass all moving in unison, becomes increasingly chaotic as the tufts
grow back in a different shade and move in a different rhythm. Some of the tufts will
trigger an abstract bird animation that rises slowly up from within the grass and flies
off the top of the screen.
7 For a full description of the study (including quantitative results) see the CCS report “Playful
Pleasures” at http://www.creativityandcognition.com/content/view/112/124/
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
84
Fig. 1 Two views of the Elysian Fields interactive artwork
This work was consciously designed with a view to achieving three different levels
of viewer experience; fascinated observation, non-goal oriented exploration and goal-
oriented interaction (triggering the birds). Although we were quite happy with some
aspects of the work, particularly the hypnotic qualities of the animation and music, we
never felt that this was a finished work. We had discussed taking it further and our
ideas usually involved adding another level of goal-oriented interaction. When
Costello reflected on this work in terms of the pleasure framework, she decided that its
key pleasures should be exploration and captivation but felt that neither of these was
strong enough yet. She felt that ten of the thirteen pleasures (all except danger, subver-
sion and difficulty) would be experienced to a very minor extent by participants but
that none of them stood out. In effect, she was expressing a view that the work was a
bit simplistic. Improving the work, in her opinion, would involve working on increas-
ing opportunities for discovery and competition and these in turn would increase par-
ticipant’s pleasure in exploration and captivation.
The user evaluation revealed that the five pleasures that participants experienced
most frequently during Elysian Fields were in order; exploration, sensation, captiva-
tion, creation (equal third) and simulation. The two surprises here were the high posi-
tions given to sensation and creation. The second position of sensation was particularly
surprising because it was also the highest out of all of the works.
The sensation of the footstep interaction in this work was frequently noted by par-
ticipants in their interviews and reports. They particularly commented favorably on the
sound effect that accompanied their step. Many of them correctly recognized that this
was the sound of a footstep in snow and for some this gave the piece added resonance,
as it reminded them of their childhood. Others commented that the combination of
sound and action made them physically feel as if they were stepping on something
with more crunch than carpet. This sense of having a physical effect may be what also
gave participants such a strong pleasure from creation. While Costello had expected
the work to evoke some pleasure from creation she hadn’t expected participants to get
as much pleasure from this as from captivation.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
85
3.3 Sprung!
The Sprung8 interactive was created in 2004 while Costello was a visiting researcher
at the Nishimoto Laboratory in the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technol-
ogy. The work was produced in collaboration with animator and sound designer
Alastair Macinnes. Sprung is partly a toy and partly a musical instrument. A large
screen presents participants with a cartoon style urban wasteland depicting three large
coil springs standing amongst puddles of water. The interface uses the physical weight
of participants standing on three pressure sensitive floor pads to animate three coil
springs. Bouncing on the pads causes the springs to depress and release creating ani-
mated soap bubbles. There are four different types of bubbles that can be produced on
each spring depending on how long the spring spends depressed. The bubbles pro-
duced bounce up from the springs before floating down to land in one of five pools of
water. As the bubbles land they create a ripple on the pool’s surface and pop produc-
ing a musical tone that is based on a Japanese pentatonic scale.
This work was inspired in part by the experience of watching people interact with
Elysian Fields. Costello had noticed during participant’s interactions with that work
that the grass squashing representation combined with the crunching sound effect
made participant’s move their bodies as if they were actually using force to stomp
something. Intrigued by the power this representation had over participant’s physical
behavior she decided to use the same screen and floor pad interface but with a differ-
ent representation.
Fig. 2 Two views of the Sprung! interface
While Costello was again quite happy with the atmosphere created by the work, she
also again felt that it needed another level of interaction. She felt, that the work didn’t
allow people enough control to really work as a musical instrument. She had observed
that the visual signs that had been created to indicate the time changes between bub-
bles were too subtle, with many people failing to notice them. This contributed to the
lack of creative control in the work. She was disappointed that the experience of creat-
ing a bubble was not as fun as she had wanted it to be. When she reflected
8 Although the correct title of Sprung! includes an exclamation mark it will not be used in the
text of the paper to make reading easier.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
86
on this work in terms of the pleasure framework she decided that its key pleasures
were creation and fantasy. She thought that there were seven other minor pleasures
that might be experienced in this work but felt that danger, captivation, sympathy and
subversion would not be present. Improving the work would, she decided, require
strengthening the pleasure that participants could get from creation.
In the pleasure model developed from the user evaluations, Sprung was character-
ized as evoking the following top five pleasures; exploration, discovery, creation,
sensation and camaraderie. The high position given to camaraderie was interesting
because it confirmed a tendency noted during the evaluation sessions for pairs to en-
gage more with each other as they tried to work Sprung out. In their comments some
participants said that they particularly enjoyed experiencing this work with their part-
ner. The pleasure of fantasy, which Costello had expected to be a key pleasure, was
not experienced very often and came in ninth overall. Creation was, as expected, much
lower than it should be, particularly when compared to the other two works. This con-
firmed the artist’s feeling that this work does not allow participants to get strong
enough pleasure from creation.
3.4 Just a bit of Spin
The conceptual development for Just a bit of Spin (Spin for short) began in 2006 after
the pleasure framework had been developed. Costello had noticed in her analysis of
existing artworks that many of her favorite artworks used the pleasure of subversion
and so she decided to create a work that had that as a key pleasure. At the time of the
user evaluations Spin was at working prototype stage.
Fig. 3. Two views of the Spin prototype
The Spin interactive is a re-working of a pre-cinematic animation device known as a
phenakistoscope. Spin consisted of a thin black disk of approximately 40cms diameter
that had a series of slits around its outside edge. The back face of the disc had a color-
ful printed circle on it, depicting figures and objects that would appear to be animated
if viewed through the slits as the wheel was spun. The content of the work was based
on the theme of political spin and specifically on the type of rhetoric that occurs when
politicians speak about progress. When the wheel was spun to the right a series of
phrases all containing the word forwards were heard. When the wheel was
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
87
spun to the left a series of phrases all containing the word backwards were heard. The
speed of the wheel controlled the speed of the sound files. If participants spun the
wheel first in one direction and then in the other, they could create new sentences,
mixing up the rhetoric of progress.
Although the form of the work changed a lot during its initial development process,
the pleasures that were chosen as key pleasures during the conceptual stage were,
Costello felt, still present in this prototype. Those key pleasures were subversion, ex-
ploration and discovery. She also felt that the work would have as secondary pleasures
creation, sensation and difficulty. The other pleasures would all be present in a minor
way apart from danger and sympathy, which she felt would not be a feature in this
work.
The user evaluations revealed that the top five pleasures of Spin were almost all as
expected. These pleasures were subversion, followed by creation, exploration and
sensation (all three equal second) and, finally, discovery. Out of the three works Spin
received, as expected, by far the highest ranking for subversion. The position of dis-
covery in the user model, however, was a bit low, given that it was supposed to be a
key pleasure. This result is echoed by some of the participant’s comments. Two par-
ticipants, for example, commented that they found the work too “finite” to be playful.
While some especially liked this work because they “understood it”, others didn’t like
it because they “got it too much”. Perhaps these finite comments might mean that Spin
failed to make people play because there was not enough freedom of movement within
its structure. As noted above, there was also a sense with Spin that it could be easily
understood. Feeling that they had ‘understood it all’ was often a trigger for participants
to move on to the next work. These participants, therefore, explored Spin but did not
make the shift into playfulness. The other two works, in contrast, were much more
technologically and conceptually mysterious and most participants finished their ex-
perience without feeling completely sure that they had understood them. (Table 2)
4 Post-Evaluation Reflections
The study did confirm many of the artist’s expectations about the possible pleasures in
these works. It was interesting, however, that the work whose results most matched
expectations was Spin, for this was the only work that had been designed with the
pleasure framework in mind. This indicates that the framework was an effective tool
for the conceptual development of an experience.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
88
Table 2 The total number of ticks that participants registered in each category for each artwork.
The ways that the pleasures in some of the other works diverged from expectations
can in part be attributed to the differing perspectives of creator and audience. A creator
of a work has a very different understanding of the levels of difficulty and affect in a
work. Something, for example, that may have been very easy to create, may seem very
impressive to an audience participant. Conversely, something that may have been quite
difficult to achieve, may be barely noticed. Costello tries to design her works focusing
on audience perception of technological effects rather than using technological com-
plexity for the sake of it. Or to put it another way, she tries to use the power of simple
technological ‘smoke and mirrors’ to create illusions, believing that what the audience
perceives is more important in terms of creating experiences than the actual technology
within the work. The discrepancy between her opinion of Elysian Fields and the audi-
ence’s, however, suggests that she had, without realizing it, lost faith in this belief.
Such differing perspectives between audience and artist are, of course, the reason
why user evaluations are becoming an integral part of interactive art practice. While
this was the first formal user evaluation that Costello had conducted on her own
works, she had already conducted informal user tests, observing many people interact-
ing with both Elysian Fields and Sprung. These observations had shaped her percep-
tion of the pleasures involved in these works but as we have seen, this perception was
not entirely accurate. Informal observations were very revealing of key interface prob-
lems such as, for example, people’s failure to notice the time signals in Sprung. In
contrast, the formal evaluation revealed much more detail about the affective and mo-
tivational aspects of participants’ experience.
The pleasure framework survey was particularly helpful in terms of identifying dis-
crepancies between audience perceptions and artist’s aims. The framework was also
effective in giving interviewer and participant a common language for discussion.
Participants had few problems understanding the pleasures and they generated some
very interesting comments. The framework survey was, therefore, a valuable part of
the study methodology.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
89
It is less certain whether the results will be effective in terms of future design direc-
tions. The pleasure framework survey did very clearly describe the different key
pleasures in each work, and this enabled each work’s experience to be more accurately
characterized. This will be useful in terms of future design directions because it will
help the artist to remain focused on the important aspects of each experience. Creating
an experience, like much design practice, is a question of balance. Changing the
weight of one feature will have an effect on all of the others. Knowing which features
need to remain more heavily weighted is, therefore, quite valuable.
One of the most interesting results, in terms of future directions, was realizing the
affective power of Elysian Fields. The openness and ambiguity of the work seemed to
make room for participants to create their own meanings and this made its emotional
affect more personal. There was less pressure in this work to “get it” compared to
Sprung but there was also less chance that people would feel that they had “got it all”
like they do in Spin. This result questions the value of the artists’ original intention to
increase the potential for goal driven interactions in Elysian Fields. While this change
might increase the chances that the work will be more pleasurable for goal-driven
participants, it risks destroying the affective power of the work’s openness. The impor-
tant role sensation plays in this work’s pleasures indicates that it might provide a better
direction to focus on when considering any changes to this work.
The lack of pleasure in fantasy that participants’ felt during their experience of
Sprung indicates that the experiential aims of this work may need to be carefully re-
considered. Perhaps, given the current puzzle-like nature of the work, it would be
better to focus on the trio of creation, exploration and discovery. Whichever path is
taken, there definitely also needs to be a focus on strengthening the opportunity for
participants to experience the pleasure of creation.
The correlation between finiteness and participants’ perception that Spin did not
make them play was another interesting result. It suggests that there might need to be
a focus on Berlyne’s category of uncertainty when redesigning the work’s potential to
evoke the pleasure of discovery. The number of phrases used in the work had inten-
tionally been limited to just 30, thinking that this would allow people to become famil-
iar with them and that they would then begin to play. This did work for some people
but may have caused others to too quickly feel that they had ‘got all there was to get’.
The work may, therefore, need another level of change to continue arousing partici-
pant’s interest. It would be useful if this change also helped increase the opportunity
for participants’ to feel the pleasure of creation.
5 Conclusion
These results suggest that the pleasure framework can be both an effective tool for
the conceptual design of playful interactive art and a useful addition to formal user
evaluations of this type of work. The results have also indicated several design direc-
tions for future versions of the three works under discussion. While it is too early to
judge how useful these design directions will be, it is clear that the pleasure framework
has been an effective tool for clarifying the pleasures that each work evokes.
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
90
The next stage of this project will involve the re-design and re-evaluation of the three
artworks and will be reported on in future papers.
The success of the framework within an interactive art context does raise the ques-
tion of whether it could also be a useful tool for other kinds of interaction design.
Although the categories in the framework were shaped by the project’s focus on inter-
active art, the theories that underpin it were all based on general studies of play and/or
games. We think there is potential, therefore, for the framework to be applicable out-
side the art world. A possible future direction in this regard would be to test the practi-
cal application of the framework within another domain of interaction design. This
broadening of the possible field of application would also require further theoretical
work to properly situate the framework in relation to other existing design tools within
that domain.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
the University of New South Wales, Australia.
References
1. Apter, M.J.: A Structural Phenomenology of Play. in Kerr, J.H. and Apter, M.J. eds.
Adult Play: A Reversal Theory Approach, Swets & Zeitlinger, Amsterdam (1991) 13-
42
2. Berlyne, D.E.: Laughter, Humor, and Play. in Lindzey, G. and Aronson, E. eds. The
Handbook of Social Psychology, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., (1968) 795-852
3. Blythe, M., Hassenzahl, M.: The Semantics of Fun: Differentiating Enjoyable Experi-
ences. Blythe, M.A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A.F. and Wright, P.C. (eds.): Funology:
From Usability to Enjoyment, Kluwer Academic, London (2003) 91-100
4. Caillois, R.: Man, Play, and Games. Thames and Hudson, Great Britain (1962)
5. Costello, B., Muller, L., Amitani, S. and Edmonds, E.: Understanding the Experience
of Interactive Art: Iamascope in Beta_space. Proceedings of Interactive Entertainment,
University of Technology Sydney, Australia, ACM, (2005) 49-56
6. Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The experience of play in work
and games. Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco (1975)
7. Garneau, P.: Fourteen Forms of Fun, Gamasutra. [Accessed 18 Jan 2006] Available:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011012/garneau_01.htm (2001)
8. Groos, K.: The Play of Man. William Heinemann, London (1901)
9. Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. and Zubek, R.: MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design
and Game Research. Challenges in Game Artificial Intelligence: Papers from the 2004
AAAI Workshop, San Jose, California, The AAAI Press (2004) 1-5
10. Hutt, C.: Exploration and Play in Children. Sutton Smith, B. and Herron, R.E. (eds.)
Child's Play, Robert E. Krieger Pub Co, Florida, (1985) 231-250
11. Lieberman, J.N.: Playfulness: Its Relationship to Imagination and Creativity. Aca-
demic Press, New York, (1977)
Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 22-25 August 2007, University of Art and Design Helsinki
91
12. Muller, L., Robertson, T. and Edmonds, E.: Experience Workshops, proceedings of
Object of Interaction Workshop, OZCHI conference, Sydney, Australia 2006. [Ac-
cessed 31 May 2007] Available: http://hdm.acid.net.au/workshop_papers.html (2006)
13. Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E.: Rules of Play: Game design Fundamentals. MIT Press,
Cambridge (2004)
14. Throop, L.C.: Field of Play: Sensual Interface. Proceedings of Designing Pleasurable
Products And Interfaces, Pittsburgh, USA., ACM, (2003) 82-86
15. Zimmerman, E.: Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process. in Laurel, B. ed. De-
sign Research, MIT Press, Cambridge (2003) 176-184
