A Touch of Playfulness Added to User Interfaces

The image that follows is actually of an advertisement for a plastic surgeon’s office.
But COME ON, PEOPLE. Even if you have no interest in cosmetic surgery, you know you want to push that button so much.

So this advertisement (unintentionally) makes a great case study about playful user interfaces. Here we have a single button — to call an elevator. You can’t get more pedestrian than a single button interface. And, yet, by supplementing the context of the button (making the user part of Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel ceiling), the entire experience of using the elevator call interface is fundamentally altered.

Creating playful technology is, therefore, as much about the user’s experience of context and expectation as it is about creating game-like interactions or whiz-bang interfaces. Playful design is bigger than the technology itself. Here the technology involved is intimately linked to but also exists subservient to the larger designed experience.

It makes me giddy every time I see this image. I totally need to push that button.

Oh. One more thought: It’s also interesting to note how this playful experience is aimed squarely at adults. I wonder how many adults who enjoy pushing that elevator call button would allow themselves to recognize that they were, in fact, playing around. 

(via Null We Know)

Comments

[naomi]

this totally geeks me out. i would argue that technology advancement is intricately connected to the human need to be seen and heard. touching that button is like touching.... the hand of God? maybe not that extreme, yet in all of these "playful" designs in technology, there seems to be a redirection from telling people what they want to listening to what they need... in a world where we are quickly adjusting to less and less real human interaction, technology steps in helps us believe we are, in fact, interacting far more intently than before.

technology (and cartoon strips) may help us learn how to read human expression and body language, but it cannot define the complexities of the human condition... a.k.a. the heart.