Learning through improvisational play: design strategies for serious games

This study is focused on developing strategies for designing for improvisational play in educational serious games. In doing so, the aim is to create games that can educate in circumstances where the behaviors or knowledges being taught emerge or change over time. The study is based on interviews with nine creative practitioners whose practice centers on improvisation. An analysis of the interviews revealed four themes that together describe the key processes of improvisational play. Each theme involves a set of opposites in dialogue: freedom/constraint; predefined/emergent; certainty/uncertainty; follower/leader. These four themes, it is suggested, can be used as design lenses for designing an educational serious game that evokes improvisational play.