Design implications of feeling playful: Play moods + atmospheres in dialogue

Based on a research project Play Stories about play design and embodiment, the aim of this paper is to explore how a fruitful combination of theories about play moods and concepts of atmospheres can enrich the field of play design. The paper explores the implications of this conceptual pairing through two design experiments. It shows how, while it is possible to design for different moods, play’s atmospheric qualities insist that designers attend to how these moods emerge, and the shifts that happens when the moods emerge. The main contribution of the paper is to point to the following design implications: Atmospheres help us understand the dynamic of moods, and we therefore have to design for several moods; atmospheres show us the multiple elements that can configure when designing for several moods; and atmospheres orients us to emergence, and show the importance of designing for fluency, which does not mean that the design itself has to be fluent. The focus on atmospheres hints at ‘the space intentionally left blank’, the ineffable and felt qualities that always evade precise description.