Chasing Play With Instagram

Play and playfulness permeate our daily lives and are often the target of interaction de-signers. Yet, designing for play while embracing the idiosyncrasies of users and their con-texts is challenging. Here we addressed recent calls for new situated and emergent play de-sign methods by turning to social media, which is currently a source of inspiration for arts, crafts, fashion, and more. We presented @chasing.play: an exploration of how Instagram may help designers capture and share instances of mundane playful engagement to inspire design. We reported on the findings of a pilot study where we experimented with the tool, and raise a challenges and open questions we plan to address in the future. Our work can trigger discussions among researchers about the potential of social media as a design tool, and can inspire and invite action towards collectively defining strategies to leverage that potential. This project was led by Ferran Altarriba Bertran and co-authored with Ella Dagan, Laia Turmo Vidal, Elena Márquez Segura, Jared Duval, and Katherine Isbister.