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Designing for playful photography
Marianne Graves Petersen a; Sara Ljungblad b; Maria Håkansson b
a Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Aarhus N, Denmark b SICS, Kista, Sweden

Online publication date: 16 December 2009

To cite this Article Petersen, Marianne Graves, Ljungblad, Sara and Håkansson, Maria(2009) 'Designing for playful
photography', New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 15: 2, 193 — 209
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13614560903204653
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13614560903204653

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Designing for playful photography

MARIANNE GRAVES PETERSEN$*, SARA LJUNGBLAD%
and MARIA HÅKANSSON%

$Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Aabogade 34, DK-8200,
Aarhus N, Denmark

%SICS, Box 1263, SE-164 29, Kista, Sweden

(Received 20 February 2009; final version received 23 July 2009)

This paper highlights the concept of playful photography as an emerging and important
area for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research, through bringing together three
research projects investigating new ways of engaging with digital photography with
theories related to playfulness and experience-centred design. Drawing upon this, we
start to unpack playful photography and its characteristics. Instead of aiming for a
unifying theory of photography related to experience-centred research, we take a
reflective stance on our own research work. This is intended to encourage a critical
discussion about playful photography, as well as support the on-going research in this
area with a possible theoretical perspective.

Keywords: Playful photography; Experience-centred design; Design cases

1. Introduction

In this paper, we highlight and start to unpack the concept of playful
photography, based on our experiences from designing and studying digital
photography applications. We suggest this is an interesting design space that
awaits further exploration as a research strand. We position playful photo-
graphy in the history of photography both inside and outside of the HCI area
and within the emerging experience orientation within HCI. Furthermore, the
concept is discussed on the basis of three different design cases, all
exemplifying characteristics that can be associated with playful photography.
The characteristics of playful photography can be considered as a resource for
others developing photo applications in this direction, but we do not claim that
the list of characteristics is exhaustive. We see them as a starting point and as
describing how playful photography can represent an activity that is done as an
enjoyment in itself, how it can involve taking advantage of the physical or
social surroundings, and be bodily engaging. Moreover, the characteristics
show how such bodily actions can be social and involve co-experiences and, for
example, how viewing pictures means that several people are physically active
together.

*Corresponding author. Email: mgraves@cs.au.dk

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia,
Vol. 15, No. 2, August 2009, 193�209

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

ISSN 1361-4568 print/ISSN 1740-7842 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/13614560903204653

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Photography became a mundane practice after the introduction of roll-film
cameras, almost a hundred years ago (Wells 2004). Amateur practices and
perspectives have interested both anthropologists like Chalfen (1987) and
literature theorists like Sontag (1977). Chalfen studied how snapshot pictures
of everyday life in the USA were possessed and valued, and what made people
consider something to be a good picture. His studies led to questions about if
and how people will create new photographic practices as novel technology,
such as video, would become part of everyday life. Sontag has written about
early significance of everyday photography, how it developed in tandem with
tourism, and how, for example, the camera was used to memorialise special
events and could be experienced as having something to do in a new situation.
Along with Barthes (1982), a twentieth century French literary theorist and
sociologist, these authors often discuss photography from the perspective of
the resulting pictures, what they picture, why and how people value them.

With the advent of digital photography, photography has become the
subject of HCI research, now involving a perspective of how people manage
their pictures on computers (Frohlich et al. 2002). Some of this work has been
situated within a ‘‘usability paradigm’’ seeking to optimise the handling,
storing and organisation of the photos; focusing less on the experiential
aspects of photography. However, in recent years, we have also seen a number
of investigations on how to design for new photographic experiences in HCI.
This strand focuses on playful, creative and aesthetic practices surrounding
digital photography rather than on optimising the usability, efficiency or
technical quality of digital photography.

We have worked independently within this strand, more specifically on
designing experience-oriented photo applications beyond the desktop, seeking
to explore alternatives (Gaver and Martin 2000) to current applications for
digital photography. Our theoretical starting point has been the concepts of
homo ludens (Huizinga 1955) and ludic engagement (Gaver et al. 2004). In
addition, the emerging experience-centred perspective grounded in pragmatist
aesthetics (McCarthy and Wright 2004, Petersen et al. 2004) has informed the
design processes. In a number of projects, we have designed for playful and
engaging experiences with digital photography taking advantage of ubiquitous
computing technologies. The result of this research has been the development
and trial uses of three digital photography applications. Bringing together
these research experiences it becomes clear that there are several strong
similarities with respect to both design intentions and the experiences from
field trials. As a result, we want to highlight what we consider to be ‘‘playful
photography’’. This is an emerging research strand that deserves special
attention, as digital photography is already a ubiquitous technology and this
specific design space is currently not very widely explored, yet complementing
other kinds of photography research within HCI. Moreover, the notion of
playful photography can be considered as its own strand within experience-
centred design, providing a specific lens that may support researchers that are
designing for other types of game or leisure activities, or even to support taking
a new perspective of more traditionally designed work applications.

194 M. G. Petersen et al.

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2. Background

The following section will give a background to how digital photography has
previously been approached in HCI, and more recently in experience-centred
HCI. Except for providing a general overview of related work, it will help to
point out how the previous work differs from what we consider to be playful
photography.

2.1 Photography and HCI

Within the field of HCI, photography started to gain attention, as it became
a digital technology. People were suddenly able to take lots of pictures at a low
cost, and share these almost instantly with others, which both created new
opportunities and challenges. A number of studies, therefore, investigate how
photographs are managed and shared on computers (Frohlich et al. 2002,
Rodden and Wood 2003), and how desktop applications could be designed to
support such new photo practices (Voida and Mynatt 2005, Kirk et al. 2006).
Kirk et al. (2006) have identified ‘‘photowork’’ as the management of a picture
collection done after capture and prior to sharing. Photowork includes
downloading, selecting, organising, editing and filing pictures, primarily
done to prepare not only for sharing but also for other purposes. Photowork
is often complex and time consuming, and Kirk et al. (2006) suggest a need for
making new software tools to make pre-sharing activities easier and more
enjoyable. Overall, the early focus on photography in HCI was how to design
tools for people to manage large amounts of digital images more effortlessly
and efficiently, and share them with others.

With the advent of camera phones, researchers has taken an interest in
communication and photography, for example, investigating the reasons for
taking pictures with and sharing pictures from mobile phones (Kindberg
et al. 2005, Van House et al. 2005). As shown in these studies (Kindberg et al.
2005, Van House et al. 2005), people take and share such pictures for a
number of different reasons, such as taking an image as a reminder for
oneself, as a visual part of an on-going discussion with friends, or as a way to
express oneself to others. Recently in HCI, there has also been an interest for
photo-sharing and social network sites like Flickr, and what motivates people
to share their pictures there, and even tag them for various purposes (Ames
and Naaman 2006).

Along with improved mobile and sensor-based technologies, there has also
been an interest within the HCI field to move away from the desktop and
design photo/video applications that take advantage of aspects of the physical
world. Rather than using sensors to create bodily engaging applications,
several of these designs have had a predominant focus on tasks, such as making
browsing easier for people. For instance, LAFCam used sensors to detect
laughter and automatically mark a video sequence as interesting, in order to
facilitate for the user to later find the ‘‘fun’’ parts of a recording (Lockerd and
Mueller 2002). StartleCam also used different sensors to automatically trigger

Designing for Playful Photography 195

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a wearable camera when the user gets excited or aroused (Healey and Picard
1998). In a similar way, SenseCam originally used a number of sensors to
automatically trigger pictures to be taken; with the intention to support people
with distorted memory (Sellen et al. 2007).

2.2 Experience-centred HCI

The emerging field of experience-centred HCI emphasises that technology is
much more than usability, efficiency and utility. Technology has become a
part of our everyday life and we react to it emotionally, intellectually and
sensually; aspects that we need to understand and consider when designing
technology (McCarthy and Wright 2004). This approach acknowledges, for
example, that technology is not only a part of our work lives, but also strongly
integrated into leisure and enjoyment, which fundamentally affects how we
should design and study technology (Blythe et al. 2004, Gaver et al. 2004). In
leisure applications, for example, it is often not the most efficient and fastest
road to a goal that is interesting, fun or satisfactory for the user, but the road
that allows exploration and creativity. In order to explore ways, technology
could support a broader range of values such as play, exploration and
personal reflection, Gaver (2002) has been working with the concept of ludic
design. Ludic design is influenced by Huizinga’s theory of play, which argues
that humans are inherently playful creatures who want and need to engage in
activities that are not related to utility, duty or truth (Huizinga 1955).

Forlizzi and Battarbee (2004) have stressed that experience need not be an
individual thing only. They challenge the assumption that experience is seen
as entirely private and subjective, as argued in some areas of experience-
centred HCI. They suggest co-experience as the experience created through
social interaction and point to creativity in collaboration as potentially
contributing to co-experience. Whereas Forlizzi and Battarbee focus on
establishing a framework for experience and co-experience, our interest lies in
designing for engaging individual experiences as well as co-experiences.

2.3 Photography and experience-centred HCI

There are a number of photography projects within HCI that, we argue, have
been experience-centred in design. What is common for these projects is that
they try to open for new experiences of capturing or viewing photographs that
have little or nothing to do with efficiency or ease of use. In doing this, they
differ from the previously mentioned efforts in HCI to support, e.g. photowork
(Kirk et al. 2006). We argue that the following examples are related to, or even
belong to, the notion of ‘‘playful photography’’ that we will outline next.

An early example is Audiophotography, in which Frohlich et al. (2000)
explored ways of using sound to add value to still images. In Audiophotography,
a sound clip is recorded along with taking a photograph, and then played when
viewing the image. Based on the concept of Audiophotography, Martin and
Gaver (2000) further explored speculative design proposals for digital camera

196 M. G. Petersen et al.

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technology that illustrated intriguing, playful, or provocative ways of taking
pictures. In a similar way, Bitton et al. (2004) explore in the project RAW how
sound can alter the act of viewing pictures. RAW is a novel photo-viewing
application that plays sound automatically taken at the moment of capture.
A more recent example is Columbus (Rost et al. 2008), which is a photo
application for exploring geo-tagged images by physically going to the places
they are located. Columbus is inspired by old-fashioned adventures of
discovering unknown territories, and is deliberately limited to show only local
pictures so that the user gradually ‘‘discovers’’ the physical and digital worlds as
she moves around.

Applications supporting more playful approaches to digital photography are
thus emerging, and are in this way promoting qualities that were already
recognised in roll-film cameras, but which so far have been relatively
unexplored in the digital realm. We see ourselves as contributing to investigat-
ing playful approaches to digital photography by taking advantage of the
properties of the digital material in developing innovative design concepts, as
well as seeking to elicit the more generic qualities of playful photography.
However, it is important to stress that even designs that are not originally
intended for playful use can obviously allow this, depending on what the user
wants to do (Ljungblad 2009). In the same way, existing commercial
applications such as Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.
com) also allow for playful uses and purposes, even though they lack some of
the characteristics that we outline in this paper as being important to playful
photography.

3. Three examples of playful photography

Below, we will describe three different photo applications that illustrate
properties of what we consider to be playful photography. We briefly describe
their functionality, design rationale and user experiences from field studies.
The three applications have been developed independently from each other,
but there are striking similarities as well as some interesting differences
between them that motivate the notion of playful photography, which we
explore and develop in this paper.

3.1 Context photography

Context photography allows photographers to take pictures of not only light
but also of movement and sound, which creates different real-time visual
effects in the pictures depending on these conditions in the immediate
surroundings (Håkansson et al. 2006, Håkansson and Gaye 2008, Håkansson
2009). The Context Camera, which is an application for camera phones, uses
the built-in microphone and camera to sense sound and movement,
respectively, and then maps this information to graphical effects that affect
the picture in real time (see Figure 1). This means, for instance, that being in
a setting with lots of noise and action will create different visual effects in the

Designing for Playful Photography 197

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photograph, than if it had been taken in a quiet setting. Context photography
thus differs from Audiophotography (Frohlich et al. 2000) in that sound and
movement are visually affecting the appearance of a picture in real time,
rather than being associated as an audio or motion clip with the still image.

Context photography allows for completely new ways of taking digital
pictures, where the photographer might take pictures of moving objects and/
or noisy settings to create aesthetically pleasing pictures with these visual
effects. The photographer can also actively create sounds or movement, or
ask someone to participate in making noise or movement in order to get an
interesting picture. The Context Camera illustrates how the use of sensor
technologies can create opportunities for new applications and modes of
interaction for digital cameras, which can encourage new creative and playful
photo practices.

The design process of Context photography involved learning about
engaging and meaningful photography experiences from a specific group of
amateur photographers, called Lomographers (Ljungblad 2007). Their enjoy-
ment and everyday practice of taking pictures were studied in order to inform
novel playful photography experiences. The final design of the Context
Camera was not intended for the Lomographers per se, but for people
interested in engaging, creative and playful digital photography in general.

In a six-week study involving seven amateur photographers who used the
Context Camera on their camera phones, we found that Context photography
changed the perceived enjoyment of taking photographs (Håkansson et al.
2006). One participant described how using the Context Camera changed his
way of taking pictures: ‘‘You move yourself or the camera more. Spin it etc. just
to try to get a fun effect’’. We also found that users enjoyed not being in

Figure 1. Context photography implemented on a camera phone (left), photographs with

visual effects created by sound and motion in the moment of taking pictures.

198 M. G. Petersen et al.

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control all the time, and that unexpected results due to the dynamics of a
setting was part of the fun: ‘‘Much of the fun with context photography is that
you feel you are not entirely in control over how the picture will turn out. The
situation will determine this. . .’’ As argued in Håkansson and Gaye (2008) and
Håkansson (2009), the combination of explicit interaction (actively creating
input) and implicit interaction (letting a certain environment create visual
effects simply by being there) can invite playful exploration. How the pictures
turn out also involves a moment of surprise. We suggest it is the combination
of exploiting aspects of the physical environment, physical interaction,
unexpectedness and visual effects that are ambiguous (rather than ready-
made with a particular meaning and purpose) which makes this playful
photography.

3.2 Autonomous wallpaper

Autonomous wallpaper combines picture taking and home decoration
(Ljungblad and Holmquist 2007). It introduces picture taking as a playful
way to actively contribute to changing the interior design in the home. People
can take pictures of everyday things with their mobile phones, send the pictures
to the application, and let the colours and patterns in the images be transformed

Figure 2. Autonomous wallpaper lets users place pictures from their camera phone on their

living room wall. Each pictures becomes a unique flower, growing dynamically with other

flowers on the wall.

Designing for Playful Photography 199

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into a unique decoration on their living room wall (see Figure 2). For instance,
it is possible to take a picture of green leaves intended to match the sofa, or take
pictures of colourful patterns or people to create an outstanding and dynamic
‘‘party wall’’ when throwing a party. Users send pictures from their camera
phones via Bluetooth or email and then position a flower on the wall by
pointing the phone to a position where they want the flower to grow. Unique
flowers with specific behaviour and appearance are then created from each
picture, and they grow among and adapt themselves to other flowers on the
wall, and can even create new flowers. Currently, the prototype is projected on
a wall from a PC, and uses an ultra-sonic positioning system to allow the user to
physically position a flower on the wall.

The design is grounded in studies of people owning pets such as lizards,
spiders and snakes, and the kind of passive, yet everyday engaging experience
that caring for such pets may involve (Ljungblad and Holmquist 2007). The
joy in using Automomous wallpaper involves both caring for the interior
design by planning and taking interesting-looking pictures, and waiting to see
how the picture will appear as a flower on the wall.

3.3 Squeeze

Squeeze is an oversized interactive sack-chair which is intended as a site for
collective and playful exploration of the history of the home as captured
through the digital photos taken with a house camera (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Squeeze. Pictures are taken through squeezing the camera; the pictures on the wall

can be explored through physical activity in the chair.

200 M. G. Petersen et al.

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The design of the camera seeks to make picture taking possible and
attractive for all members of a family, even for small children. As a picture is
taken, it is immediately put on display on a wall close to the sack-chair. The
pictures can be explored from the sack-chair through movement in the piece
of furniture and through manipulation of the active zones on the sack-chair.
It is possible to stretch and rotate pictures, and it is possible to navigate back
and forth in history. The active zones of the sack-chair are deliberately
distributed over the entire chair in a way that allows for collective control, and
requires collaboration and physical activity in order to explore the photos.
The physical shape of the over-sized sack-chair is designed to accommodate
multiple people, its flexibility allowing for a changing number of people’s
presence adapting to the shifting circumstances of the home.

The furniture was brought into two homes for trial use. In general, the
families were keen to engage with each other and explore Squeeze. While one
father commented at first that the furniture looked more appropriate for a
kindergarten, they were all engaging physically and actively in exploring the
pictures, as exemplified by Figure 4 where a mother grabs her son’s foot and
bumps it into the sack-chair as a way of browsing photos. We were further
surprised to see how a six-year-old boy started to take pictures of beautiful
patterns in the home, for instance, close-ups of a patterned carpet, and then
eagerly awaited its presence on the wall. The family members were also
sometimes playfully fighting over control of the pictures, e.g. as one navigated
forward in the pictures, another went back.

4. Unpacking playful photography

In the following, we will discuss a number of characteristics that we suggest are
of importance to playful photography, based on our three designs presented

Figure 4. A mother grabs her son’s foot and bumps it into the sack-chair to browse the

collection.

Designing for Playful Photography 201

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above. These characteristics are brought up to open for debate and support
a further exploration of playful photography, and should not, therefore,
be viewed as an exhaustive list of what playful photography is. Rather
than attempting to define an overall framework that would include or
exclude specific designs, we suggest that different photo-related designs may
share one or several of these characteristics of playful photography, as well as
include others that are different from the ones that we outline here. In line with
the experience perspective furthered by Blythe et al. (2004) and McCarthy and
Wright (2004), we see playful photography as something that can only be
designed for but not be prescribed by design.

As argued above, designs that primarily focus on efficiency, for example,
organising pictures in the most efficient way, would not be categorised as
playful photography. Similarly, a camera intended to log the everyday life
without any user involvement is not necessarily playful photography.
However, it is important to acknowledge that such designs may still end up
involving some elements of playful photography, if users start to explore and
engage in playful ways beyond the designers’ intentions.

4.1 Part of mundane everyday life

All three designs are intended for non-professional settings in everyday life,
and they represent different approaches to this. Squeeze is integrated as a piece
of furniture in the home environment and designed to be appealing to all
members of a family, including small children. Autonomous wallpaper is part
of the interior design. Both Context photography and Autonomous wallpaper
represent activities that can be done as a quick leisure in between other
mundane activities. Snapshots can be taken, for example, when waiting for the
bus, without allocating time for this as a separate activity. Thus, this is different
from, for example, photowork and working with photo albums, which can be
considered as a separate allocated activity rather than an in-between activity.

4.2 Activity as engaging in itself

Squeeze, Autonomous wallpaper and Context photography are all designed
for exploratory activities that are done as enjoyment in itself. With Squeeze,
the exploration of digital pictures is designed to be an engaging social and
physical activity, with Context photography, the act of taking pictures is made
novel and playful, and finally with Autonomous wallpaper, a novel playful
display of pictures in physical space is explored.

Research on photowork has suggested that post-capture and pre-sharing
activities should be made easier and more enjoyable (Kirk et al. 2006). These
three playful photography applications focus primarily on novel ways of
capturing and sharing pictures, and while photowork is not made completely
redundant in these contexts, the need for it might be changed or reduced. In the
case of Squeeze, for example, there is no work-process between taking a picture
and sharing and experiencing it on the wall. In addition, since the intention to

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take pictures changes in playful photography, people might not take the same
amount of pictures or with the same frequency as with regular cameras used
for, e.g. documentation. As a result of this, the need for photowork will
probably be different and may not even be conducted or considered meaningful
by the users when they engage in playful photography applications.

Moreover, the purposes of engaging with the prototypes are strongly related
to activities that are attractive in themselves and thus detached from more
task-oriented activities where the purpose is to ‘‘get the work done’’. For
example, Context photography invites playful exploration of taking pictures
with sound and movement as new parameters, Autonomous wallpaper invites
playful exploration of taking different pictures as a way to dynamically
decorate one’s home, and finally, Squeeze offers a social site for sharing
memories within the family.

Another characteristic, which our applications point to, is the issue of time
efficiency. As argued by Kirk et al. (2006), there has been a tendency towards
evaluating photo applications in terms of the time it takes to retrieve a photo.
For all the playful photography applications we have developed and explored,
time is not a critical issue in this way. On the contrary, the situations are
characterised by excess time; of time spend with the purpose of spending time
in an engaging and playful way, where the situation at hand becomes the
purpose in itself. This is in line with the need for designing for pottering, as
called for by Taylor et al. (2008).

The characteristic of having the activity as engaging in itself is also well in
line with the experience perspective furthered by pragmatist aesthetics, which
promotes curiosity, engagement and imagination in the exploration of an
interactive system (Petersen et al. 2004). We see this in the trial uses of the
systems in that, for instance, for Context photography it is argued that ‘‘Much
of the fun with context photography is that you feel you are not entirely in
control over how the picture will turn out’’ illustrating how curiosity and
imagination motivates the engagement with the system. Similarly with
Squeeze, the physical activity, which the interaction design invited for,
contributed to engaging the families to investigate the digital photos, leading
to the next characteristic of supporting bodily engagement.

4.3 Supporting bodily engagement

The designs in this paper represent applications that are mobile or beyond the
desktop, and they take advantage of this by making use of the physical
surroundings and bodily actions to open for playfulness and exploration. In
Context photography, sound and movement have become new parameters,
allowing the photographer to either create sounds and movement by bodily
actions, or explore how aspects in the physical surroundings may affect the
pictures by, e.g. seeking out a busy setting. With Squeeze, pictures are
explored through shared physical activity with other people. With Autono-
mous wallpaper, users can physically ‘‘plant’’ flowers on their wall. As
opposed to adding sensors to a camera for passively logging activities (e.g.

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Holleis et al. 2005, Sellen et al. 2007), playful photography applications
exploit such technical opportunities to encourage bodily engagement from
the user. This is in line with aesthetic interaction (Petersen et al. 2004), which
also emphasises the value and potential in invoking the whole body and the
senses in the interaction with technology. Furthermore, both Squeeze and
Autonomous wallpaper also operate on a bodily scale in the way the pictures
are explored. With Squeeze, the area with embedded sensors invites for
engaging the whole body, e.g. the foot (figure 4) and even makes room for
more than one person contributing directly to the interactive control and
exploration, in this way supporting co-experiences (Forlizzi and Battarbee
2004). With Autonomous wallpaper, the pictures grow on the wall making it
possible to relate to the contents of the pictures on a bodily scale.

4.4 Moments of surprise

Context photography, Autonomous wallpaper and Squeeze all exploit
‘‘moments of surprise’’ as important parts of the overall experience. The
Context Camera is deliberately designed so that the visual effects will not be
displayed until the picture has been taken. If the effects would be constantly
visible in the viewfinder, this might create specific expectations on each
picture, and diminish the fun. Our field study showed that an element of
surprise is essential in making Context photography exciting, and that the
lack of user control that it brings with it can also be part of the fun
(Håkansson et al. 2006). Similarly, in Autonomous wallpaper, it is difficult to
foresee how a specific picture will turn out as a flower, which then leads to a
surprise once the picture is sent to the wall. In Squeeze, the element of
surprise lies instead in when and which picture will appear on the wall, which
depends on how people engage with the sack-chair, e.g. by playfully
counteracting each other’s actions.

In contrast, an example where this kind of creative ‘surprise’ has not been
taken in consideration is conventional digital cameras that give a warning
when the lighting is not appropriate or the picture might get blurred. As
Dunne (1999) critically argues, this is ‘‘as if to warn the user that she is
breaking the norm and is about to become creative’’.

The applications in this paper further illustrate how lack of control can be
part of an engaging experience. In all three examples, the relationship between
the process of capturing a picture and the ‘‘resulting’’ picture is subject to
exploration, and this is part of the enjoyment itself. For example, in Context
photography the surrounding sound and movement are not necessarily
possible to control. However, this can still be perceived as a fun challenge,
leading to unpredictable but not necessarily undesired effects. Similarly, it is
not possible to foresee how the flowers will appear in Autonomous wallpaper,
unless the exact same picture has been used before. This lack of control is,
however, considered as an important part of the system.

Interestingly, the lack of control conflicts with classic ideals of direct
manipulation and points to the value of moments of surprise, which is not

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seen as an interaction ideal in more traditional usability-oriented paradigms
of HCI.

4.5 Open for social interaction

Social interaction around photographs in HCI has often involved viewing or
organising photos together, for example in a desktop application, which
usually implies that one person is controlling and structuring while other
people are more passively observing. Playful photography can support an
alternative and preferably more engaging form of social interaction.

It is apparent that Squeeze supports and builds upon social interaction and
shared experiences of photography. In fact, the design requires more than one
person to take full advantage of its functionality through the physical
distribution of the controls on the sack-chair. This is in line with the emphasis
on co-experience as promoted by Forlizzi and Battarbee (2004) who suggest
that experiences can be enhanced through sharing. Thus, this should be
considered as an important issue for playful photography.

Context photography and Autonomous wallpaper do not require several
people to interact with each other, but allow for various social experiences
nonetheless. In fact, it can be argued that both designs could be meaningful as
a shared activity. Context photography was inspired by lomographers, who
share a very specific practice, interest and community. In a similar way, Context
photography could lead to emerging groups of people who enjoy this particular
way of taking pictures and want to share their experiences with others. In the
case of Autonomous wallpaper, it could become a conversation piece as well as
a collaborately created ‘‘garden’’ of flowers at, for instance, a social event.

4.6 The purpose of taking pictures changes

Playful photography provides new opportunities for why pictures are taken.
Early purposes of amateur photography were to memorialise a vacation, and
more recent purposes of using camera phones include taking a picture to
memorise a receipt or send someone a visual reminder. With new technology,
the reasons why people take pictures might change. One important part of
playful photography is that this ‘‘why’’ also is likely to be open for
interpretation (Sengers and Gaver 2006). This means that the goal of taking
pictures and how to enjoy them is ambiguous and something that users
actively engage in. For example, using Squeeze together with others to
explore the sack-chair and look at pictures on the wall potentially allows for
a more engaging experience of the resulting pictures that is affected by the
presence of several people. Context photography changes the overall
experience in the moment of taking pictures, as sound and movement
usually do not affect pictures in this way. However, how such pictures are
interpreted*as the ‘‘truth’’ of a situation or simply as a fun effect*is left
open to users to decide. In a similar way, users decide for themselves how and
when they use Autonomous wallpaper. Pictures that are explicitly taken to be

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sent to the wallpaper are likely to be different from pictures that are taken as
a note or as a memory. For instance, a picture could be taken of a pattern or
even just a colour that the user wants to see as a pattern on the wall.

5. Discussion

Above, we have unpacked playful photography based on the experiences from
our design concepts, and the experiences of trial uses of these. The ambition is
not to outline the defining characteristics of playful photography, but rather
to suggest characteristics of a design space in this way pointing towards such
and supporting designers who want to design similar applications and explore
this space. Furthermore, with the characteristics we wish to invite for a debate
and sharing of experiences more generally within this area beyond singular
point designs. Our concepts point to the potential of moving interaction and
experience around digital photography into the physical space, in fact where it
came from, but with the digitisation of photography it has resided for a while
on the desktop platform. With this work we wish to challenge and
complement this research through pointing to other directions.

Through bringing our independently developed cases together in this way,
we also wish to call for design-oriented research that further investigates
motivations and purposes of photography. Through innovative playful
photography design, we can make new kinds of experiences and relations
to a variety of digital photography applications possible. Even though the
characteristics of playful photography were derived from having theories
of homo ludens, pragmatist aesthetics and experience meet the area of digital
photography; the characteristics seem to point to more generic qualities of
playful ways of engaging with digital materials, which go beyond digital
photography. It would be relevant for future design-oriented research to
investigate how the above characteristics can inform design for other
domains within a playful realm. Furthermore, future playful photography
research could investigate the significance of the resulting pictures, and how
these are interesting to the spectator as individual or society, as exemplified
in, for example, Camera Lucida (Barthes 1982). Here Barthes reflected on the
role and meaning of photographs from the perspective of the ‘spectator’, the
viewer, of a photograph. As means of reflection, Barthes defined two themes,
studium and punctum, where the studium is the subject of an image or the
symbolic meaning, and the punctum is what makes it interesting for a
particular spectator. This could be a curious detail, or as in Barthes’ case, a
personal relationship with the subject in the picture together with a sense of
time that triggers punctum. Barthes was interested in the relation between
these two. Theoretical themes like those presented by Barthes could be
valuable in guiding the further exploration of playful photography. The
examples in this paper focus on novel playful ways of supporting the act of
taking photographs and displaying/sharing them afterwards, but not on the
visual qualities of ‘playful photographs’. If looking at the visual qualities, the

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themes of studium and punctum could be relevant to consider*do they exist
in the pictures resulting from playful photo applications, and how can we
speak of them? What is it in a picture taken with a playful camera application
that triggers the spectator (as opposed to the operator, the photographer)?
Finally, as Barthes stressed in his work, looking at and appreciating pictures
is something that is highly subjective. We can speak of certain qualities in
pictures, but it is the spectator who ultimately decides what makes an image
interesting to her. This is supporting the value of the subjective proposed by
experience-centred HCI, and therefore of high relevance to playful photo-
graphy.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, we have furthered the concept of playful photography based on
theories of homo ludens and experience-centred perspectives as well as the
development and trial use of a number of design concepts supporting playful
photography. In this way, we have described how playful photography is
grounded in theoretical perspectives and we have unpacked characteristics of
playful photography based on the theories and design cases. We have
positioned playful photography with respect to the history of photography
and we suggest that some of the qualities of early photography, e.g. of having
interaction and experience around photography as integral part of the
physical space has become lost with digital desktop-based photography. Our
cases and trial uses suggest that ubiquitous computing open up for
new opportunities for re-establishing and even improving the experiences
around photography in this direction. Furthermore, we have positioned
playful photography within the field of HCI and we have pointed out how
playful photography can serve to complement research into, e.g. photowork
(Kirk et al. 2006), which focuses on improving the processes between capture
and sharing. Both our design concepts as well as the characteristics of playful
photography we have established suggest that there is an unexplored potential
in designing for new experiences around the processes of capturing and
sharing digital photographs. We have established a number of characteristics
of playful photography as part of our unpacking of the concept. Our goal
with this unpacking is to promote the design space of playful photography
and to encourage others to explore this further. Furthermore, we wish to
invite for a debate around this space, i.e. what other characteristics for playful
photography can be established and how can the experiences from this design-
oriented research into playful photography bring about lessons for designing
for playful relations to other types of digital materials.

Acknowledgements

We thank the people who participated in the trial uses of the prototypes and our colleagues

at SICS, Sweden and Center for Interactive Spaces, University of Aarhus.

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