Towards Fostering Play Between Separate Spaces in a Public Venue

HCI has a longstanding interest in facilitating impromptu play between both collocated or remotely located unacquainted people. Less explored is fostering play between people in close, but separate locations. We present early results from a project investigating if ICT can facilitate new social play encounters through connecting different levels of a children's play centre. We designed and deployed two large-scale interactive mockups of robots: a creature with an enormous tongue; and a device that physically raised children’s artworks to offer them as drawing stencils to users one storey above. Although our operation of these mockups was very ad hoc, our field-testing identified several promising insights. We suggest opportunities for further exploration in designing to connect separate places and advice for design researchers conducting similar tests.