The drift table: designing for ludic engagement
Abstract
The Drift Table is an electronic coffee table that displays slowly moving aerial photography controlled by the distribution of weight on its surface. It was designed to investigate our ideas about how technologies for the home could support ludic activities-that is, activities motivated by curiosity, exploration, and reflection rather than externally-defined tasks. The many design choices we made, for example to block or disguise utilitarian functionality, helped to articulate our emerging understanding of ludic design. Observations of the Drift Table being used in volunteers' homes over several weeks gave greater insight into how playful exploration is practically achieved and the issues involved in designing for ludic engagement.
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Design can learn from educational approaches more generally to design for playful, 'tinkering' engagements, and such 'ludic' design of generative AI systems can build on a long research tradition tracing back to Gaver and colleagues' Drift Table and contexts such as playful encounters with robots.
“In this light, we argue that design can learn from educational approaches more generally to design for playful, 'tinkering' engagements, and note that importantly such 'ludic' design of generative AI systems can build on a long research tradition tracing back to Gaver and colleagues' Drift Table [33] and contexts such as playful encounters with robots [55].”
From Responding to Generative AI Technologies with Research-through-Design: The Ryelands AI Lab as an Exploratory Study (2024) · cites this paper as [33]
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- Authors
- Gaver, W. W., Bowers, J., Boucher, A., Gellerson, H., Pennington, S., Schmidt, A., Steed, A., Villars, N., & Walker, B.
- Affiliations
- Royal College of Art (GB)
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology (SE)
- Royal College of Art, London, UK
- Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
- Lancaster University (GB)
- University College London (GB)
- Venue
- CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2004-04-24
- Pages
- 885-900
- OpenAlex
- W2118028783
- Cited by
- 439
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 10.91
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA) (publishedVersion)
- Goldsmiths (University of London) (acceptedVersion)
- Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Interactive and Immersive Displays
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Art, Technology, and Culture
- Keywords
- weight distribution, ludic activities, ludic design, household technology
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