SCUSA - Identifying five types of disruption for playful experiences.

The study explores the concept of playfulness in a design context. Playfulness is considered an important area because of the many positive effects it can have on human experiences. But in order to design for playfulness, there is a need to better understand the possible nuances of playful experiences. The objective of the current study is thus to provide such a nuanced understanding of playful experiences. The study was developed by exploring inherent drivers of playfulness through development of playful designs by a class of 25 Master students in design. This lead to identifying disruption as the overarching characteristic of playfulness, and developing a classification of five distinct (but not mutually exclusive) types of disruption, represented by the acronym SCUSA. The SCUSA model can be valuable as an entry-point for designing with the aim of eliciting playfulness, and for understanding and analyzing …