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Cited by 14Innovative Human-Technology InteractionUsability and User Interface DesignDigital Media and Visual Art

Designing for Playfulness in Human-AI Authoring Tools

Open access
Liapis, Antonios, Guckelsberger, Christian, Zhu, Jichen, Harteveld, Casper, Kriglstein, Simone, Denisova, Alena, Gow, Jeremy, Preuss, Mike·2023·Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
DOI 10.1145/3582437.3587192
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Abstract

Many human-AI authoring tools are used in a playful way, while being primarily designed for task-achievement—not playfulness. We argue that playfulness is an important yet overlooked factor of user behaviour and experience when interacting with such tools. Motivating and rewarding playfulness as an exploratory, task-agnostic, open, and subversive attitude can support the satisfaction of more diverse user goals, and have a strong, positive effect on the user experience, the emerging human-AI interaction, and the resulting artefact. In this paper, we motivate the importance of playfulness as user experience in human-AI authoring tools, and propose concrete strategies to design for playfulness in the human user through UI design, in the AI through algorithms, or through interventions to their dialog. We conclude with an outlook of the research agenda.

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  • In the General context, a recurrent theme in planning and translating support was the provision of interfaces that enabled rapid iteration and organization of idea and text generations.

    “A recurrent theme in planning and translating support in this context was the provision of interfaces that enabled rapid iteration and organization of idea and text generations [79,104,123].”

    From Co-Writing with AI, on Human Terms: Aligning Research with User Demands Across the Writing Process (2025) · cites this paper as [79]

    Section 4.1 (page unavailable) proposes an interface in which users change a prompt and immediately compare the resulting image, supporting the idea of interface-enabled iteration. The paper does not describe a recurrent theme in planning and translating support, or interfaces for organizing generated ideas and text; its example concerns text-to-image generation. (LLM, conf=0.75)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In the Personal context, there is transformation of user inputs between modalities like speech to text or visuals to text, or between textual forms like keywords to prose.

    “We also see transformation of user inputs between modalities like speech to text or visuals to text [79,144], or between textual forms like keywords to prose [65].”

    From Co-Writing with AI, on Human Terms: Aligning Research with User Demands Across the Writing Process (2025) · cites this paper as [79]

    Citation [65] is attached to the claim about transforming keywords into prose. Section 4.1 discusses changing words in a text-to-image prompt, and Section 4.3 discusses playful interpretation of user input, but neither describes keywords being converted into prose. Searches for “keywords” and “prose” found no passage addressing that transformation. (LLM, conf=0.72)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 25

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  6. Christian Guckelsberger. 2020. Intrinsic motivation in computational creativity applied to videogames. Ph. D. Dissertation. Queen Mary University of London.
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  11. Anna Kantosalo and Hannu Toivonen. 2016. Modes for creative human-computer collaboration: Alternating and task-divided co-creativity. In Proc. ICCC. 77-84.
  12. Hyung-Kwon Ko, Gwanmo Park, Hyeon Jeon, Jaemin Jo, Juho Kim, and Jinwook Seo. 2022. Large-scale text-to-image generation models for visual artists' creative works. arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.08477 (2022). · arXiv
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Authors
Liapis, A., Guckelsberger, C., Zhu, J., Harteveld, C., Kriglstein, S., Denisova, A., Gow, J., & Preuss, M.
Affiliations
  • University of Malta (MT)
  • Aalto University, Finland
  • IT University of Copenhagen (DK)
  • Northeastern University (US)
  • Masaryk University (CZ)
  • University of York (GB)
  • Queen Mary University of London (GB)
  • Leiden University (NL)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
Publisher
ACM
Published
2023-04-12
Pages
1-4
DOI
10.1145/3582437.3587192
OpenAlex
W4363651340
Cited by
14
References
16
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2
FWCI
3.25
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)
Locations
  • International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) (publishedVersion)
  • OAR@UM (University of Malta) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • IT University Of Copenhagen (IT University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Aaltodoc (Aalto University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Digital Media and Visual Art
Keywords
playfulness, user experience, human-AI interaction, user interface design, user motivation, exploratory behavior, subversion

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