Towards a typology for playable digital interventions in urban public space

This paper explores the junctional juncture between playable digital interventions and urban public spatial design. Ubiquitous mobile digital devices and their pervasiveness in daily life are creating a shift in the traditional uses of urban public spaces and redefining how play occurs in urban public spaces. Activating possibilities of play in public space encourages people to go on a spontaneous and amorphous way of discovering new things in daily life relying on awareness, taking one’s time, reflecting, experimenting, exploring, etc. Utilising the framework of playable digital interaction and exploring urban spatial environment narrative literature, twenty five existing and proposed playable digital interventions in urban public space are studied to develop an initial typology. This typology includes characteristics such as diverse interactive mechanism, experience, and spatial features. This classification of playful digital interventions in urban public spaces will enable urban planners, designers, decision-makers, game designers, and researchers to realise the great potential and conceptualize the design of future digital playable installations for public spaces