Playful User Interfaces: Literature Review and Model for Analysis

This paper reviews the literature on playfulness in user interfaces and proposes a model for analyzing where playful interaction can be introduced into applications and services. The authors argue that playfulness can improve user experience, increase motivation to use a product, and encourage users to learn new features, giving designers an additional tool alongside conventional usability practices. The review draws on game industry experience and seeks to show how playful attributes can be generalized to non-game applications.

The literature search was conducted in 2008 across academic databases, books, and web sources using keywords such as playfulness, playful user interface, and enjoyable user interface. Of the studies identified, 32 met the inclusion criteria: 24 theoretical and 8 experimental. Half were conference papers, with the remainder comprising journal articles, books, a PhD thesis, and a magazine piece. Publications span from 1982 to mid-2008, with a clear increase in interest over the most recent decade. The reviewed work covers a range of application types, including websites, mobile devices, games, and augmented reality environments.

The synthesis identifies recurring characteristics of playful interfaces, including challenge, curiosity, fantasy, fun-in-doing, exploration, customization, feedback, metaphor, and social interaction. These are organized into a model based on Mitchell et al.'s classification of user interface components: visualization, interaction, and style and complexity, with interaction further divided into user activity and application or service activity. Four user activities are highlighted as relevant to playfulness: navigating, browsing, controlling, and searching, alongside system activities of providing notifications, giving feedback, and simplifying interaction. The authors present a table of concrete UI components and examples for each, and conclude that playfulness should be applied carefully, with the proposed model intended for future validation in existing applications.