Lizzie Wa Design

To do this week:

• Set up literature review
• Common ground
• Workshops 
• Ideation 
• Questions for Holly – Expert 

Literature Review

This week I set up my literature review to collate the research I have done so far into one place. I structured it using key words and plan to add all future research into here as well. My literature review can be found here: https://lizziewadesign.wordpress.com/2022/03/22/literature-review/  

Workshop ideas

I want to run some casual workshops to test out some play ideas and decide on an area of play to focus on. To do this, I decided to explore what the different areas of play are and decide on about 4 of these to make into separate workshops. 

I anticipate it may be difficult to find the ideal people to take part in these workshops due to having to fit this organisation around full-time work. However, i think that even if they people involved are already connected with each other, it will still be a good exercise to see what play people enjoy and feels easily accessible to them and what kinds of play are harder for adults to engage with. 

Creative/artistic 

•  Portraits of another person. Creates eye contact, purpose to sit with someone you don’t know. Humour in outcome and being in a different situation. 
• Adding the next line/ part to a painting/drawing 
• Drawing, folding, passing game 

Simple

• Questions 
• Two truths and a lie 
• Word association 

Building 

• Collaborative creating sculpture
• lego 
• Den building

Would you rather? Giant wall version? – string from each of your answers – creating a string maze, art installation and way to find common ground with others. 

I wrote some quick mind maps to explore the different areas of play I could explore within workshops. 

Ideation

I wanted to get my creativity flowing by undertaking some creative activities without a purpose. In many ways this is just playing so it is also really relevant to my project. I used some letter stamps to play around with the word play.

As an activity I found that the process was relaxing and allowed my mind to wander, think about ideas and make connections without me trying too hard to make any of those things happen. 

This started as a simple exercise to boost my creative thinking, but I think the stamped letters are actually very relevant to my project. The act of creating them is very playful and the letters look playful on the page as they never come out straight. This also creates really interesting connections between each letter which never happens organically with digital type. Each letter connects and interacts with the next in a very playful and natural way. Every time a word is written it looks different and the letters connect in different ways, this is a lovely metaphor for the experience of bringing strangers together. You never know how the interaction will go and what will come out of it. 

I like the idea of potentially using this idea further in my project, so will keep it in mind as I progress. 

From these letter stamps I also started to explore the idea of turning the y upside down and drawing it as someone doing a handstand. 

Common ground

The importance of common ground came up again and again in my survey research and in conversations i have had casually with others. Doing the same activity or having a sense of common ground, makes it easy for people to know what to talk about. 

Find all my survey answers here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-qFhfcwSuTzKciqsQI1MSw1pGSGuvQ7MXjV_8YFYQuE/edit?usp=sharing

Observations 

I spent some time sitting in the park to watch how people interact with people they know well, people they don’t seem to know that well and complete strangers. I then took some notes on what I saw/heard. 

Dogs help people connect – very different types of people. It gives them something to talk about and focus on- not as much eye contact needed as they look at dogs instead. 

Calling a dog to come is a good way of leaving the conversation. 

Babies and young children also have a similar effect. 

Work colleagues tend to talk about work – or at least have the comfort of that common ground to fall back on.

Students chat about projects and work as this is what they have in common – same with our cohort group. How is your project going? Is a common conversation starter and a good topic of common ground to start with. 

How to best connect 

This made me think about how best to help people connect and what from my experience and observations were important factors to consider.

You need to be on the same level physically ie. Both stood up or both sat down 

You need to be close enough that conversation can flow easily but not so close that you feel like your personal space is being invaded 

You don’t want silence as it creates pressure on conversation, but too much noise makes them hard to initiate or follow. 

It helps to have something else to focus on rather than just each other – and to have something to do with your hands. This means less worrying about eye contact or awkward silences. 

From this, it brought up some questions to explore further: 

• How close is people’s personal space on average?
• Does a physical barrier between people like a table help with comfortable interaction? 
• Does the way benches and chairs are placed/designed help this? 
• Would some way to counteract the worry’s people feel about conversations with strangers help? Positive affirmations? Stats about conversation enjoyment and the liking gap? 
• Any way of helping people leave the conversations? A time limit at a natural end time? 
• Importance of smiling??

Expert

I managed to have a chat with Holly Gramazio about her work in play and games design, as well as about my project. 

She had some really interesting insights into my idea from her experience of creating situations for play. She told me how when she is scoping out an area for setting up a play space or game, she puts a hopscotch on the ground and then watches from afar for a while to see how many people interact with it. In her experience, she finds that almost all children will play with the hopscotch (unless they are involved with something more interesting like riding a scooter). With adults however, she finds around 1 in 100 interact with the hopscotch. This shows that getting adults to actually interact with my outcome may be more difficult than i had expected. 

She told me how the newer, shinier and more interesting the hopscotch the more likely people were to interact with it. She finds this happens with everything she creates, the more effort people can see you have put into it, the more likely they are to interact. 

From her experience, she found that within a gallery, museum or exhibition situation, people were more likely to interact with games and play. This is possibly because they have chosen to enter the space and are therefore more willing to be exposed to something new and different. 

She also brought up the idea that even though some people don’t physically engage in the game or play, they can still experience the idea in other ways and gain enjoyment from looking at, reading, listening to the experience etc. I found this idea really interesting, as before I had just been focused on how to get people to play. This makes me realise that not getting some people to play isn’t a failure, as long as they can experience my outcome in some way. 

People need instruction on how they are supposed to interact with a space as they dont like to be unsure. When giving people instructions however, Holly recommended not to use more than 2or3 sentences. She thinks it should be made clear how long it will take, what they will have to do and what they will get out of the interaction. 

She made the point that people don’t like to be told to talk to each other, so I need to make sure that talking comes naturally as part of the activity they are engaging in. Ways to help make this happen are experiences that make people linger in one place. The longer they stay the more comfortable they start to feel and the more chance overs will be near them to allow conversation to naturally occur. 

Things that people have to create or make are a good opportunity to talk as you can compliment others’ work or ask others for certain materials to be passed over as a way to start conversation. 

A good way to show adults that they are allowed/supposed to play, is having two versions of something. One small and low and one bigger and higher up. 

In general her feedback on my project was that the idea was very interesting and my action plan seemed to be on the right lines. She expressed an interest in seeing how it developed and said she was happy for me to send her my ideas for feedback later in my project. 

Case Studies

Two interesting projects she mentioned to me were Clockwork Forest created by Greworld. They places clockwork keys into real trees. This acted as temptation for people to engage and start turning the keys, this resulted in a satisfying clicking sound that reinforced the idea that they were doing the right thing, before their action resulted in music being played from the trees. https://greyworld.org/the-clockwork-forest/ 

The other was Karina Smigla-Bobinski’s “ADA” installation, where she created a giant helium ballon with spikes of charcoal all around it. When people enter a white room with the ballon they can play with it passing it between them, bouncing it off the walls or trying to draw with it – all the time creating their own artwork right on the space. https://zephyrsolutions.com/helium-balloon-charcoal-drawings/ 

I think both of these are really powerful as they are such simple things, but the invitation to interact with them and the reward you get from doing so are so obvious from both.