Play|Con — Matías Carbone / Product Design.

The ‘Play|Con’ is a concept design that I started, mainly as a visual exploration, of a “what if“ trigger question that popped in my head.

“What if people had access to a game controller that could adapt to each one’s comfort needs and preferences?”

It all began with some sketching.

My intention was, as a personal design excercise, to challenge the idea of how we play and interact with the typical physical interfaces that are normally used & available for virtual games today.

flexible. ergonomic. personalised.

I always felt that the hardware we have acces to for playing video-games, wasn’t exactly as “elastic” in nature as the virtual play-experiences they enable us to immerse into. Usually when you see other players customize their interfaces, is mostly about merely changing the appearance of the objects, but there’s barely (if any) no flexibility to adapting them to our physical needs.

What if it’s winter season and you need to keep your hands warmer while you play, or what if it’s the opposite way around, the environment it’s too warm and you have sweaty hands…or maybe you need more support in a specific area of your hand while performing certain actions with the controller…

So, I came up with this concept that would give space for users to change or swap the grip of the controller according to each unique situation, need, and possible preferences. More than often, designers would try to “force into shape” hard materials in a way that would make them look and feel as if they were soft and smooth. But, what about using materials that actually have those inherent qualities, such as a foam material, or fabric for example? These is what I attempted to explore with this project.