Using Game Design as a Frame for Evaluating Experiences in Hybrid Digital/Physical Spaces

This paper explores the perceptions of public and private information spaces through the creation of a novel experience, known as Chattr, wherein a physical public space was created within which people’s conversations and actions were subject to some of the rules that would normally apply to interactions taking place in online social networks. The authors consider people’s experience of Chattr at two different venues, and use games design as a lens through which to evaluate such hybrid experiences. This games lens frames Chattr as a system whose formal structure is governed by rules operating at three levels: constitutive, operational and implicit, and helps identify how differences in each venue altered the nature of the experience. We believe using game design in this way, to frame physical/digital spaces, helps a greater understanding of the complexity of our interactions in such spaces by revealing how the different digital and physical rules governing these spaces ultimately affects our behavior.