A Catalog of Speculative Playful Urban Technology Ideas: Exploring the Playful Potential of Smart Cities

In this paper, we present an annotated portfolio of speculative playful urban technology concepts. Our portfolio builds on and illustrates in designerly ways the findings from our research into the playful potential of urban spaces. We begin by describing two Situated Play Design [1] interventions where we identified play potentials of urban spaces, i.e., playful things that people already do in public spaces and might have socio-emotional value. We suggest that these play potentials could inspire the design of future smart city technology that pays more attention to the social, emotional, and cultural role of urban spaces in human life. To show that potential and foreground the inspirational value of our findings, we present a catalog of speculative design ideas that embody the design directions and play potentials we identified in our research. We hope to contribute to an existing and exciting body of work aimed at inspiring the design of increasingly playful and socio-emotionally sustainable urban technology.