Plan for the week:
- Investigate each potential subject area further
- Refine my questions
- Choose a question to take forwards
Investigate each potential subject area further
How can I use design to influence behaviour and get adults to play more?
Why? – Needs ‘alibi’s for play. Create non-embarrassing play experiences for adults – play for adults needs to be designed
What action do I want people to take? I want adults to play without embarrassment so that… they can access the benefits
… they can connect with others
… they can become more creative
… they can feel happier / blow off steam/ counteract stressful jobs and lives
What do I want people to do and why?– Reconnect with being young and playful
What are benefits? – Mood, creativity, innovate thinking, community and connection
Play-learning (with and from children)
State of flow
Work/life balance
What kind? Sport, free or imaginative play – the hardest and most socially unacceptable
artistic play
Games – structured play
Constructive play – creating or building things
What situation? Exercise class /sports team – a decision people have to make to engage with play
Work
In town/city – something people come across to add play into their lives by chance
At home
What possibilities are open to this?
Book of play
City instillation
Exhibition
Club/class
Game
Show opportunities for play that already exist- looking differently
How can I use design to help people make more sustainable food choices?
Why? Help people to eat and shop more sustainably. Reduce impact on planet and increase awareness and understanding of what food are best to eat.
What action do I want people to take? Make better and more informed food choices
What? Supermarket organised by sustainability. Record how it changes how people shop?
Infographic
App
Traffic light/ symbol system
How can design help to change the narrative around cycling and turn it into a more inclusive sport?
Why? Get more women involved in cycling and make into a more rounded and inclusive sport.
What action do I want people to take? Women to start cycling, get outside and enjoy the benefits, friendships etc that can come along with it. Change peoples perception of the sport.
What are the benefits? Exercise, friendship, achievement, out in nature, boosting mood
Choosing a subject
From this interrogation of my subject areas it became clear to me that I was more drawn to the idea of play. It feels as if it could unveil some really interesting insights and that it opens up the potential for a really fun and bold project. Something that I can really have fun with as this is a great opportunity to push boundaries and do something just for me and not for a client.
Exploring Play in my local area:
I explored my local area on the look out for play. I found lots of organised play for children in the form of sports. The children ran about, exercised, laughed and bonded with each other, while parents stood at the edges either drinking coffee and talking or watching.
Just round the corner was some less structured play in the skatepark. Without enforced activities children and teenagers played, tried out new things and supported each other.
There were also examples of totally unstructured play in the park next to it. Children ran around playing an imaginary game that was impossible to understand from the outside.
The only example of play I saw that involved adults was a group of men playing a football game. Apart from that adults walked, ran, cycled and chatted. Everything they did was very sensible and calculated. Running uniformly around the edge of the field, carefully avoiding puddles and carefully avoiding eye contact with strangers they passed.
It made me question the structure of play and its impact on the play. Does it dampen the creativity, connection and benefits? Or does it make it easier for people to access them by giving them constrains to play within?
Exploring others ideas of play:
I also watched a selection of videos about play to explore insights from others about the subject.
Yolanda Tyler – Ted talk
Work life balance doesn’t leave time for play. It affects mental health, or bodies and our families. We are in work mode far too much.
It makes people into equals when they play together.
Play creates community – it shapes social interactions and builds bonds. Its creates interesting ideas and concepts. How can I live more creatively? (Tyler 2019)
John Cohn
John Cohn discussed the importance of play in dealing with grief. “The harder it gets the harder you have to play” (Cohn 2013). Play helps to deal with greif and is important even in the saddest moments. He set up a project called Sams Stones after the death of his son. Through this playful project he has found its helped him to process and more on.
Ash Perrin
On a similar idea Ash Perrin talks about the importance of play for children who have been through crisis and trauma, such as refugees. “Bringing back play to communities in crisis can have a profound effect” (Perrin 2018)
European journal of paediatrics 2015 – finding of a trail into effectiveness of clown therapy and anxiety
Kids in crisis and trauma need play to bring them back and move forwards
The Flying Seagull Project – nonprofit that brings play and laughter to marginalized children, Perrin works with children in refugee camps who are living in acutely difficult circumstances
He has seen first hand the impact play and laughter can have on helping children to cope with unimaginable situations. I think this idea is incredibly interesting but also could be extended further to help adults to deal with these traumatic situations too.
Additional Research
Andrew Walsh believes that adults often find it hard to play because “Play is often seen as inappropriate in adult settings, with social expectations causing adults to frame situations in such a way that we often lack permission to play”. He thinks play is seen as socially unacceptable unless within very specific boundaries, such as an amateur dramatics play or a sports game. (Walsh 2019)
Sebastien Deterding surmises that, “we need alibis, or excuses, to allow us to play as adults” (Deterding 2017)
Many adults find the idea of play embarrassing and that acts as a barrier. “As an internal process, embarrassment is the sudden self-conscious awareness of such identity-disconfirming events, together with negative affect and arousal over seeing or imagining others who disapprove of us as a result.” (Deterding 2017)
To get around this fear of embarrassment play needs to be shown as the correct way to approach the situation and therefore socially acceptable to engage in. Therefore setting up a frame for play is important for adults.
“All she is left with is choosing between the embarrassment of being a stiff spoilsport and the embarrassment of being a clumsy novice and neglectful professional.”
(Deterding 2017)
Free play makes people particularly embarrassed as there are not pre-defined rules and actions to fall back on.
“The social meanings of play—unruly, pleasure-driven, free, and unproductive—disconfirm the valued social identity of being a self-regulated, norm-abiding, and productive adult. Hence, play risks embarrassing adults.”
(Deterding 2017)
Deterding concludes that to help adults play, “It requires smooth performance of role expectations, made easier by clear scripts, rules, and fallback routines. It requires appropriately deep involvement in play and lowered self-consciousness of one’s public appearance, aided by engrossing activities and masks, pseudonymous avatars, or hiding in a crowd, disrupting the response-presence of others.”
Refine my question
From my notes about play I refined my idea into a few potential questions:
- How can I use design to combat the embarrassment adults often feel around play to allow them to access the benefits associated with it?
- How can design facilitate adults using play to help them bond and connect with others? (Helping adults make friends and build bonds – important as its harder for adults to do this and needed after the last two years of disconnect and digital lives)
- How can design show the importance of and/or create opportunities for play as an antidote for modern life for adults? (Counteracting stressful jobs, pandemic, poor work life balance, need to be professional etc)
- How can I design situations to help adults boost their creativity through play?
- Could childlike thinking be the key to designing better futures? And could play help adults to unlock this way of thinking? How can design be used to help facilitate this process?
I thought on these ideas, asked others for their opinion and spoke to Ben about my ideas. From this I focused on these two ideas:
Can play help us conceive and realise alternate futures?
The future can look like a scary place, with news on climate change, biodiversity loss, resources running out, political unrest and wealth inequality amongst many other things. Children somethings seem to have a uniquely positive and unrestricted view of how to improve the world. Can using play to reconnect with our inner child help us to create different futures than the one we seem to be heading towards. Or find ways to adapt to climate change futures.
In a post-pandemic world, how can play help us reconnect with others?
This would involve trying to create ways to help people build connections with others through play. Using play to bond, drop your guard, laugh and have fun as a way of meeting and building connections with the people around us. Building a sense of community maybe or getting strangers to meet and laugh together. Play is how children build relationships and connections, maybe these ideas can be translated to adult life?
There are so many people who live close to others, but feel alone. Covid and lockdowns have made people feel more isolated than ever and highlighted the importance of human connection. The shift towards home working and hybrid working is great for flexibility but can leave people feeling burnt out and isolated.
I think this idea has potential so I explored it a bit further and asked myself a series of questions:
- How might I do it?
Learn about play, how to do it, what benefits it has. Learn about the link between building connections and play. Learn about what barriers adults feel towards play. Design a way to get adults to connect via play.
- Who is this for, who is my audience?
Adults who feel a lack of connection in their lives. Possibly isolated from home working, family commitments etc. Find it hard to meet and connect with people.
- What are my aims objectives and purpose?
With this project I aim to use play to create something that helps people to feel more connected with others. I want to make people smile, laugh, drop their guard and feel a connection with others. Create a playful moment that may be the starting point of a life long friendship or a fleeting moment of connection with a stranger.
The purpose of this project it to help people to reconnect, and explore the fun and power of play while doing so. To add a bit of brightness and positivity to peoples day after the last two years of pandemic and lockdowns.
- What framework will I use in my project?
Need to think more on this.
- How might I investigate my research question?
Through research already created around play and its benefits. Through playing myself to work out what benefits I feel from it and the difficulties I find with accessing it. Speak to my target audience to see what issues they are facing currently, was reservations they have about play and how I can help them to play.
- What has happen in my chosen area of research already?
There is a lot of research into the importance of play for children in helping them build relationships and make connections.
Some designers use play as an integral part of their design identity either in their outcomes or as a way to help ideate.
- What connections can I make?
Need to think more on this? Who can I speak to in this industry?
- What research methods could I use?
Secondary research of articles around play, both focused on children and adults.
Qualitative research, talking to people about their expertises of isolation during the pandemic and beyond.
Researching through play itself but trying things out myself and with others.
- How will project benefit me and others?
This project should hopefully benefit me by allowing me to be free, fun and playful in how I research and create my outcome. The project should also benefit others by helping them to build connections, boost their mood and access the many benefits of play.
Process
Now I am almost decided on my question I started to think about the processes I could use during this project.
Eric Zimmerman discusses the idea of using play as research. He focuses on the field of games design, but I believe the ideas he talks about are relevant to all kinds of playful design. His process is one of iteration – prototyping testing, analysing and refining. Zimmerman explains that the experience of a player/user can’t be completely predicted, so using iterative design the product develops through a dialogue between designer and audience. Getting other people to play your games and playing them yourself is important. This process-based methodology allows questions to emerge from the process of design and then be answered through the same process. (Zimmerman 2003)
I can see that this will be a useful idea to incorporate into my process. If I want to get adults to play, I need to explore what I am creating myself and with others along my process to ensure it is a successful outcome.
A process of iterative design will therefore be very important during this project.
Looking into the process of research I re-read part of Real world research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers by Colin Robson. He discusses the idea that you can approach design research in two ways. You can plan everything in advance and know exactly what data you will collect, or you can let the research lead you and develop your design through interaction. (Robson 2011)
Reference list
COHN, John. 2013. “The Importance of Play | John Cohn | TEDxDelft.” YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NT1-BdOvI.
DETERDING, Sebastian. 2017. “Alibis for Adult Play.” Games and Culture 13(3), 260–79.
PERRIN, Ash. 2018. “The Power of Play | Ash Perrin | TEDxJacksonville.” YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNAtVKLxjnA.
ROBSON, Colin. 2011. Real World Research : A Resource for Users of Social Research Methods in Applied Settings. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
TYLER, Yolanda. 2019. “The Importance of PLAY in Adulthood and Childhood | Yolonda Tyler | TEDxBoggyCreek.” http://www.youtube.com [online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSx_csPHE0c.
WALSH, Andrew. 2019. “Giving Permission for Adults to Play.” The Journal of Play in Adulthood 1(1).
ZIMMERMAN, Eric. 2003. “Play as Research – the Iterative Design Process.” In Design Research – Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT.
Lizzie Wa Design 
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