Design principles of interactive play systems for children’s outdoor play: A designers’ perspective

In recent years, designers around the world have developed a number of interactive play systems to stimulate children’s outdoor play. This paper provides a framework for the design principles used by designers of interactive play systems. In addition, the mechanisms by which these design principles could potentially contribute to stimulating children’s outdoor play are discussed based on the COM-B model of behaviour change. The COM-B model is adopted to elaborate the design principles and their mechanisms of action. This model provides a basis for designing healthy behaviour change interventions. It defines behaviour as the result of an interaction between three components that generate behaviour: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. The contribution of this paper is to identify the design principles and link them to the underlying factors of children’s outdoor play in terms of the components of the COM-B model. Clarifying this link elaborates the mechanisms of action of design principles to stimulate children’s outdoor play. An in-depth interview approach is used to explore the designers’ perspectives. The findings of this research contribute to the theory of behaviour change and are beneficial for practitioners, and in particular, interactive designers who develop systems that stimulate children’s outdoor play.