This paper explores the perceptions of public and private
information spaces through the creation of a novel experience, known
as Chattr, wherein a physical public space was created within which
people’s conversations and actions were subject to some of the rules
that would normally apply to interactions taking place in online social
networks. The authors consider people’s experience of Chattr at two
different venues, and use games design as a lens through which to
evaluate such hybrid experiences. This games lens frames Chattr as a
system whose formal structure is governed by rules operating at three
levels: constitutive, operational and implicit, and helps identify how
differences in each venue altered the nature of the experience. We
believe using game design in this way, to frame physical/digital spaces,
helps a greater understanding of the complexity of our interactions in
such spaces by revealing how the different digital and physical rules
governing these spaces ultimately affects our behavior.