Part B: What Should You Consider When Designing a Play Product? Play Factors
- Austin Davis
- Aug 10
- 10 min read
Play Factors in Play Product Design
From understanding the factors to using them as design enquiries
In Part A, I proposed that designing a play product involves more than deciding what an object should look like, how it should function, or what material it should be made from. A play product creates possibilities for actions, and those actions may lead a person towards a state of play.
I introduced five interconnected Play Factors that influence this relationship:
The User
The Setting and Situation
The Purpose and Intended Experience
The Material and Form
The Play Behavior, Actions, and Mechanics
These factors provide a way to look at a toy, game, kit, or other play product not simply as an object but as part of a larger play experience.
The next step is to ask:
How can a designer actually use these factors while designing?
One way is to convert each Play Factor into a set of Design Enquiries. These are not meant to function as a rigid checklist. Instead, they are questions that help a designer investigate and reflect about the relationships between the participant, the product, and the play experience being created.
PLAY FACTOR 1 | The User
Who are we designing play for?
Understanding the user is more than defining an age group.
Age certainly matters because physical, cognitive, social, and emotional abilities develop over time. However, two children of the same age may still engage with the same product in very different ways.
A designer needs to understand about the users:
what users are physically capable of doing;
what level of understanding do they have;
what interests them;
what they already enjoy doing during play;
what kinds of challenges appeal to them;
whether they prefer playing alone or with others;
how much guidance they require (connected to their level of understanding); and
what previous experiences they bring to the product.
Consider something as simple as throwing a ball at a target.
For one user, hitting the target may be an exciting challenge. For another, the distance may make the action frustrating. A younger child may enjoy simply throwing and retrieving the ball without caring about accuracy at all. The physical action may therefore remain similar, but the experience depends greatly on the user. This is why observing existing play behaviour becomes particularly useful.
This shifts the designer’s focus from simply matching a toy category to an age group towards understanding what users already enjoy doing and how a product might connect with those existing behaviors.
PLAY FACTOR 2 | The Setting and Situation
Where does the play actually happen?
A play product is never experienced in isolation. It exists within a physical and social setting.
A ball used in a large outdoor field creates very different possibilities from the same ball used inside a small room. A construction set used by one child at home may create a different experience when twenty children encounter it in a classroom.
The setting influences factors such as available space, movement, noise, safety, number of participants, duration of play, supervision, storage, portability, social interaction, and freedom to experiment.
But setting is not only about location. The situation also matters. A child may encounter the product voluntarily, during a structured classroom activity, while friends are already playing, while waiting somewhere, or through an adult introducing the activity. Time available, facilitation, and the presence of other participants can all influence how the experience unfolds.
These circumstances can influence whether a person even enters a playful state.
For example, a toy that encourages running, hiding, or chasing may work beautifully outdoors but become inappropriate in a small classroom. Similarly, a product containing fifty loose parts may allow rich construction play at home but become difficult to manage during travel.
The designer therefore needs to understand not only where the product will be used, but also what will be happening around the participant while it is being used.
PLAY FACTOR 3 | The Purpose and Intended Experience
What are we actually trying to create?
A play product does not necessarily need to teach something or solve a problem. Entertainment itself can be a completely valid purpose. But even then, the designer should go one level deeper and ask: What kind of fun are we trying to create?Fun is not one universal experience.
A product might create fun through:
curiosity; humour; surprise; physical excitement; imagination; creative expression; discovery; challenge; mastery; competition; cooperation; suspense; sensory pleasure; experimentation; or social connection.
These experiences are very different from one another.
A balancing toy might create pleasure through concentration, tension, and mastery.
An open construction set might create satisfaction through experimentation and expression.
A pretend-play product may primarily support imagination and storytelling.
A throwing toy may create excitement through movement, accuracy, risk, and improvement.
When the product also has a learning, therapeutic, developmental, communicative, or social objective, the challenge is to consider what play should help the participant experience or achieve without losing the qualities that make the activity playful.
Purpose therefore provides direction to the rest of the design. It influences the type of action, material, challenge, social interaction, and play behaviour that may be appropriate.
PLAY FACTOR 4 | The Material and Form
What does the product allow a person to do?
Material and form are often approached primarily as product-development decisions involving manufacturing, scale, shape, cost, and feasibility.
In play design, however, material and form perform another crucial role: they create possibilities for action.
Consider a ball again.
Its roundness allows rolling.
Its elasticity may allow bouncing.
Its size affects whether it can be grasped with one hand, carried, kicked, or thrown.
Its weight affects speed, impact, distance, and who can comfortably use it.
Its surface influences grip and tactile experience.
Changing these characteristics changes the play possibilities. The same principle applies to almost every play object.
A large lightweight block may invite carrying, stacking, knocking over, hiding behind, or collaborative construction. A small wooden block may invite precise arrangement, balancing, pattern-making, or detailed construction.
A flexible material invites very different interactions from a rigid one.
Material and form therefore create affordances: qualities of a product that suggest or make particular actions possible. Eg: A handle invites pulling; A wheel invites rolling; A cavity invites filling or hiding; Repeated parts invite collecting, sorting, arranging, or combining; Magnets invite connecting and separating.
The design objective is not simply to make something aesthetically attractive. It is to intentionally create play-leading actions through the physical properties of the product.
PLAY FACTOR 5 | Play Behavior, Actions, and Mechanics
What kind of play is the product expected to support?
This factor moves closest to the actual experience of play.
A designer needs to consider what users may do, but also what kind of broader play behaviour those actions might support. These two things are related, but they are not the same.
Play Actios
A play action is something the participant directly does.
For example:
Throw. Stack. Arrange. Connect. Move. Hide. Collect. Balance. Draw. Transform.
These are observable actions.
Play Behaviours
Play behaviours describe broader patterns through which people engage.
For example:
Exploring. Constructing. Pretending. Experimenting. Competing. Collaborating. Collecting. Repeating. Mastering. Performing. Destroying and rebuilding. Discovering.
The same action can support several play behaviors. A child stacking blocks might be constructing a tower. Another might be experimenting with how high the blocks can go. Two children might turn stacking into a competition. Someone else may repeatedly build and knock the structure down simply because the transformation itself is enjoyable.
Therefore:
Stacking is the action. But construction, experimentation, competition, repetition, or mastery could be the play behavior surrounding it.
Mechanics
Mechanics introduce another layer. A mechanic structures how an action operates and what happens as a result.
For example:
The participant throws a ball. That is the action.
Repeated attempts to improve accuracy may reflect mastery-oriented play behavior.
If hitting three targets allows the participant to move farther away, that becomes part of a mechanic structuring the challenge.
Not every toy requires formal mechanics. An open-ended construction toy may rely primarily on affordances and user-created possibilities. A board game, however, may depend heavily on explicit mechanics and rules. A play designer therefore needs to decide how much structure the intended experience actually requires.
The question is not:
How many rules can we add?
It is:
What level of structure helps create the form of play we want?
The Five Play Factors Work Together
These five factors are easier to describe separately, but they should not be designed separately.
Imagine designing a throwing toy.
The USER influences its appropriate size, weight, difficulty, and required physical ability.
The SETTING influences how far it can be thrown and whether the experience is safe indoors or outdoors.
The PURPOSE determines whether throwing is intended to create an accuracy-based challenge, physical excitement, cooperation, experimentation, sensory feedback, competition, or another form of engagement.
The MATERIAL & FORM determine how the object flies, bounces, lands, sounds, transforms and feels.
The PLAY BEHAVIOUR, ACTIONS, and MECHANICS determine what participants actually do and how the experience develops.
Changing one factor can alter the others.
This is why designing play products is not simply a sequence of:
Form → Material → Manufacture.
It is an interconnected process of aligning:
User → Setting → Purpose → Material & Form → Play Behaviour, Actions & Mechanics
around the experience the designer hopes to enable.
Design Enquiries: Using the Play Factors in Practice
Understanding the five Play Factors is useful, but their real value lies in how they influence design decisions. Rather than treating the factors as a checklist to be completed once, they can be used as areas of inquiry throughout the design process. A designer may return to the same questions while researching users, defining the opportunity, developing concepts, selecting materials, prototyping, playtesting, and refining the final product. The answers may also change as the project develops.
USER | Design Enquiries
Who is the intended user?
What are their physical and developmental abilities?
What can they comfortably grasp, move, lift, throw, assemble, balance, or manipulate?
What kinds of play behaviors already appeal to them?
What motivates their participation?
What might frustrate or discourage them?
What level of challenge is appropriate?
Are they expected to play independently or with others?
Will an adult need to introduce or facilitate the experience?
Are the intended play-leading actions understandable, achievable, and enjoyable for them?
SETTING & SITUATION | Design Enquiries
Where is the product likely to be used?
How much physical space is available?
Is the setting indoor, outdoor, fixed, or mobile?
How much time might participants have?
Will play happen individually or socially?
How many people might engage at the same time?
Will the experience require facilitation?
What environmental conditions could affect play?
Could components easily become lost or damaged?
Does the product need to be portable or quickly stored?
Does the setting support the movement and actions the product encourages?
How might the experience change when another participant enters?
PURPOSE & INTENDED EXPERIENCE | Design Enquiries
Why are we designing this product?
What need, opportunity, or experience are we responding to?
If the purpose is entertainment, what kind of fun are we trying to create?
What should the participant feel during play?
Should the experience encourage curiosity, excitement, imagination, challenge, mastery, expression, cooperation, or something else?
Is there a learning, developmental, therapeutic, or social objective?
What should remain enjoyable even if the participant never achieves a specific outcome?
What would make the experience meaningful for the user?
Does the intended purpose align with the user's motivations and play behaviour?
MATERIAL & FORM | Design Enquiries
What actions should the product invite?
What should users be able to grasp, move, connect, transform, throw, stack, balance, squeeze, or manipulate?
How should the product respond when acted upon?
Does its form communicate possible actions naturally?
How do size and weight affect play?
How does texture influence interaction?
Should the product bend, bounce, rotate, collapse, separate, or transform?
Does the material provide satisfying sensory feedback?
How does material affect safety and durability?
Could changing the material create a completely different form of play?
Are manufacturing decisions supporting or reducing the intended play possibilities?
PLAY BEHAVIOUR + ACTIONS + MECHANICS | Design Enquiries
What kinds of play behaviour already appeal to the intended users?
What play behaviour is the product intended to encourage?
What can the participant actually do with the product?
Which actions are essential to the intended experience?
What happens when those actions are performed?
Does the product provide an interesting or satisfying response?
Can one action lead to several different forms of play?
Is repetition enjoyable?
Can the participant improve, experiment, or discover something over time?
Can users create their own meanings, stories, variations, or challenges?
Does the product require formal rules?
If rules exist, what purpose do they serve?
Are mechanics supporting play or unnecessarily restricting it?
Can different users engage with the same product in different ways?
What makes someone want to begin?
What makes them continue?
What makes them want to return?
The answers to these enquiries are not fixed.
An assumption about what users enjoy may change after observation. A material that appears appropriate may not produce the intended action during prototyping. A mechanic that seems exciting on paper may feel restrictive during playtesting. Participants may even discover possibilities that the designer had never anticipated.
These discoveries are not failures of the process; they are part of understanding play. A play designer, therefore moves repeatedly between:
Observing → Asking → Designing → Making → Playing → Learning → Redesigning
The Play Factors provide the lens.
The Design Enquiries help apply that lens throughout the design process.
Designing for the Possibility of Play
This discussion began with an earlier article, "How Does a Person Experience Play?" in which I explored the idea that play is not contained within an object or activity but emerges when certain conditions allow a person to enter a playful state.
In Part A, this idea was translated into play-product design through the five Play Factors. In Part B, those factors have become a practical set of Design Enquiries that designers can use to think about the relationship between the user, product, context, actions, and intended experience.
Who are we designing for?
Where and under what conditions will play happen?
What kind of experience are we trying to create?
What actions should the material and form make possible?
What play behaviours and mechanics should those actions support?
These questions shift the designer's role. The objective is no longer simply to design an attractive toy or functional game. It is to intentionally create the conditions, possibilities, and invitations that enable a participant to enter a state of play.
The product is what we design.
The actions are what we enable.
The experience is what we hope will emerge.
And perhaps that is the larger task of Play Experience Design:
not to design play itself, but to design thoughtfully for the possibility of play.
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