Designing locative human-forest interactions through playful design workshops

Abstract

Technological advances offer opportunities to motivate and support meaningful interactions with forests and nature. This paper outlines the findings of three distinct design days, all centred on human-forest interaction. The objective is to explore the gameful potential of the intersection between humans, forests, and technology. The design approach in all scenarios involved an outdoor activity, such as geocaching, and a design workshop where card-based ideation methods were used to develop initial ideas. These concepts were further refined and captured as toy-play and play-acting videos. The design days resulted in twelve ideas from twelve groups, each drawing inspiration from the outdoor activity portion of each day which was conducted in a forest or forest-like location. This paper presents the final ideas and analyses them based on their story, characters, setting, values, and goals. The final video outcomes generated by the groups highlight the scope of the design space in human-forest interplay, revealing numerous new avenues for utilising technology in enhancing our connection with forests and nature.