Design Guidance for Location-based Play: a review of research frameworks

How to best make use of design research contributions in a domain to distil the guidance they offer for design students? We outline a typology of design guidance for location-based interactive experiences, compiled from a review of existing design tools, research frameworks, and empirical studies that cited an intention to support the understanding and design of location-based play. Motivated by our reflections on teaching courses that focus on non-traditional, novel interaction methods, we sought to extract value from design tools knowing how useful they can be to students working in unfamiliar genres. Design tools fell across two broad intents: facilitating generation and supporting understanding. Guidance within these is further characterised as establishing benchmarks, generating and developing ideas, alternative considerations, design documentation, structural elements and qualities of experience. Less visible was guidance for the process of design, for translating design into development, and for how designers might respond to the advice.