Playful User Interfaces: Literature Review and Model for Analysis

Abstract

Introducing playfulness to applications and services has great potential to improve user experience, as it can be both an effective instrument for the design and a significant addition to current formal user interfaces. Playfulness increases users’ motivation to use the product, and learn new features and technologies of the device. Thereby it opens additional capabilities for designers and developers to introduce new functionality. On basis of a literature review, this paper provides an overview of user interface characteristics that can affect playfulness. We present a set of user interface components with playful interaction possibilities and define a general methodology for analyzing playfulness in user interfaces. Game industry has a tremendous long-term experience in creating attractive interfaces with the best balance of fun and functionality. This paper shows possibilities how it can be effectively generalized to non-playful applications through playful attributes.