Daddy, You Can Be the Fox: Designing Hybrid Playgrounds for Nature Integrated Storytelling

Using Research through Design, this paper explores how to design a technology augmented outdoor playground installation that utilizes storytelling to create engagement for local wildlife and ecosystems. Through a multisectorial design project a permanent playground installation was developed, implemented, tested and evaluated over a period of six years. The installation is a small play hut, integrated in the natural landscape and augmented with interactive audio stories. The installation was found to invite extended and recurring use, for children and families. The stories and their content seemed to engage children, and they also readapted them through story-informed play. Creating meaningful interactivity proved challenging, as it caused confusion and broke storytelling immersion. We suggest the strong concepts of designing for Story-Informed Play and the Unique Opportunity Effect. Other design implications include to design for; qualitative story content, robustness, playification, screen-free interaction, ambiguity, malleability, intuitive use, multi-user, and extending the experience beyond the installation.