The game as social activator, between Design and Sociology: a multidisciplinary framework to analyse and improve the ludic experiences and their social impact.

This paper introduces a tool of a framework for the observation and analysis of play experiences (PEOF - Play Experience Observation Framework). PEOF consists of a multidisciplinary set of theoretical and empirical tools and guidelines between Sociology and Design that scholars, designers and researchers may use in order to comprehend and exploit the ludic dynamics in terms of meaningful experiences. It is mainly addressed to Persuasive Games and Games for Change, as communication systems for social innovation capable of generating experiences that stimulate a reflection on socio- cultural issues. Indeed, through the play activity, we can experience (and therefore understand) perspectives that are different from our usual ones. Specifically, we describe the set of concepts of frames, patterns and scripts on the ground of the PEOF and in particular of the Evidence- Interpretation Matrix (EIM), a PEOF related research tool. EIM focuses on how the mentioned concepts can be empirically used to attest that a change is occurring by playing certain games. Through observation and interpretation of a playing activity, it aims to understand what happens when players are encouraged to open their mind to new ideas. The overall framework and related EIM tool have been tested and refined through several case studies developed at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano, like the Persuasive Urban Game A Hostile World, here used as main example to explain and validate our suggestions.