Designing for spatial narration in children’s playscapes

Today, digital technology is very much present in the everyday settings children live, learn, and play in. Focusing on supporting children’s use of body-movement and senses in narrative play, we offer a theoretical framework and guiding design principles for digitally-enhanced physical play environments. Probing how children construct spatial narrative through interaction with tangible objects, we argue that blended environments which combine digital and physical media may contribute to the versatility of such spatial activity. With reference to an overview of related work in human-computer interaction, we discuss the intermediary capacities of objects, whether they are designed as toys for child-play or not. We identify different forms of interaction that children have with objects, and position blended environments within this classification. Also offering a repertoire of roles children take on in play, we outline four design principles for a prototype of a digitally-enhanced environment that enables children to articulate spatial narrations.