I really like the concept of a “Playable City”. At a recent conference, Clare Reddington, Creative Director at Watershed, spoke about the concept of a Playable City. A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories. In other words, the concept of Playable Cities enable inhabitants to interact with their cities in a way which is very different to their everyday interactions. I guess the concept can be best explained through some great examples:
Luke Jerram – “Park and Slide”
“Park and Slide”, a one-off interactive art installation by Luke Jerram which took over a Bristol high street last year, with people taking turns on Jerram’s giant water slide.
Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier – “Shadowing”
With this project by Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier, Bristol’s city lights have been given memory, enabling them to record and play back the shadows of those who pass underneath.
Design I/O – “Faces”
“Faces” is an interactive installation that captures your portrait and sketches it at large scale, projected onto a building across the street. It was installed for six months as part of San Francisco Art Commission’s “Lights on Market St” Project. During that time, Faces captured and displayed 30,000 portraits, with an average of 160 portraits a day. Pan Studio – “Hello Lampost” “Hello Lamp Post” was a playful SMS platform project that ran in Bristol and which enabled people to strike up conversations with familiar street furniture using the text message function of their mobile phones. As a result, people shared their thoughts and stories with streetlights, parking meters, letter boxes, bridges and boats in Bristol, with over 25,000 text messages sent by players in just 8 weeks.
Main learning point: I love the concept of “Playable Cities”, enabling people to see their cities in a new light and to interact with their everyday environments in a completely different way. Apart from the playful element involved in some of the Playable City projects, I believe that we can also learn from the new ways in which people interact with everyday objects. We can apply these learnings to other product areas and interactions.
Related links for further learning:
- http://www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity/overview/
- http://www.lukejerram.com/projects/urban_slide
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2619931/Park-slide-Adventurers-reclaim-centre-Bristol-historic-street-turned-giant-water-slide.html
- http://shadowing.cc/
- http://design-io.com/projects/Faces/
- http://panstudio.co.uk/folio/hello-lamp-post/
- https://huffduffer.com/dConstruct/178670
As I learn ... 