Designing for Play that Permeates Everyday Life: Towards New Methods for Situated Play Design

In this paper we discuss strategies to support our design research agenda of promoting playful engagement within everyday activities and situations. We argue that this agenda is in alignment with the ethos of the third wave of HCI. To support design in this space, we build upon Situated Play Design, an open methodological frame that focuses on uncovering existing manifestations of contextual play as a starting point for designing playful technology. Towards further developing that approach, here we highlight a series of emergent methodological challenges, and speculate tactics to address them. Our contribution is a methodological reflection of how to support situated play design, as well as an invitation for designers to continue envisioning, articulating and sharing new methods in this emerging space.