Designing for Children’s Outdoor Play - Reading Notes
Article “ Designing for Children’s Outdoor Play”
by Jon Back, Caspar Heeffer, Susan Paget, Andreas Rau, Eva Lotta Sallnas Pysander, Annika Waern
11/10/20 - I have not finished reading the paper
11/11/20 - Not quite finished
11/12/20 - Finished
*My notes in Italics
Quotes:
“Incorporating technology in the outdoor environment is a potential way to combine the social and physical advantages of classical outdoor play with the appeal of computer games, thus making outdoor play more attractive to children again.”
Ok, I don’t think children don’t want to play outside, I think adults have created systems in which children don’t get the opportunity to play outside. I really don’t think we need to “coax” kids outside, we just need to provide them the opportunity, time and space!
“An interactive playground is commonly defined as a space in which physical play objects are augmented with digital technology that stimulate play”
Wow, I really don't think kid play needs to be stimulated! It already exists, and just needs to be tended to!!
Referring to study by Herrington and Studtmann
“Inventions such as planting areas with both natural and horticultural species in the schoolyard have been used as a way to improve the physical wellbeing of the children, and change the culture of play in the school grounds.”
“A particularly interesting observation from this study was how the mere act of planting some bushed moved play out of the fixed installations into two ‘houses’ formed by the bushes, perceived as suitable for imaginative play by the children.”
“Evocative design experiments to elicit free play in young children. The SmartGoals are simple poles that form a goal that light up when something is passing between them. FlashPoles are poles that light up when buttons are pushed or rotated. Some mobile technology has also been proposed such as Ledball and Morels. The focus in these project has been on supporting open-ended play rather than implementing specific game challenges … play activities that are guided, but no constrained by the design artefacts.”
But I don’t think children need technology like those listed above on the playground, I think that by interacting with their space they are getting the affordances that these technologies provide. Rather than installing one of these technologies, why not plant trees, make a hill, make a sandbox, provide building materials for a fort, build a pond? Provide children with a chance to watch something naturally grow and develop? What exactly about the world will they learn by seeing lights turn on when something passes through a SmartGoal? I think they’ll learn about a reaction loop.. But I think you can learn about a reaction loop by moving leaves and sticks out of a stream and watching the water get unclogged then rush by. And you’d also observe hydro-dynamics, and you’d feel a sense of accomplishment, and you might work on that with someone else and learn about collaboration. I just think a SmartGoal really provides one thing: if you pass through it, some lights turn on. This is really not that interesting of thing to have on a playground. It is not open ended in any way.
The interactive artefacts developed in the project share common design goals: they are designed to invite open- ended play and to be possible to integrate in landscape architecture. They are also designed to be combinable.
I love the emphasis on fitting into the landscape.
The tube registers when objects, such as water, stones and twigs, are being put through and can recognize certain qualities of the objects, in the prototype like liquidity, noise, and movement. Feedback is provided by the tube itself…
The tube projects a continuous soundscape around it, that gets more intense as the tube is used more and tunes down when the tube is used less. Each sensor also triggers its own sound. Visual feedback was mounted on the tube itself, and takes the form of a sequence of RGB LEDs on the top of the tube. Just as the ambient sound landscape reacts to the intensity of play, the LEDs show a pulsating animation, where the pulsation frequency increases when the tube is used intensely. When a sensor is excited, the LEDs show a falling animation to mimic the object falling through the tube. Each sensor is represented by a different colour on the LEDs.
Im actually not sure how important all of this feedback is? Im curious to finish the article and see.
The communication concept was intended to enable children to communicate verbally with children in other places. … When a button is pushed, the communication channel to the respective node is opened. The nodes are identified with icons on the buttons resembling their physical appearance. … The prototypes also allow both buttons to be pushed at the same time, so that the speaker can speak to both nodes at once.
Love the communication tubes!
While the interactive designs offer some inherent play opportunities, their purpose is to be integrated into an outdoor environment.
As I said above, the fact that this project is really a study of play, interactive technology AND landscape is very interesting to me.
Before the installations were put in place … children were asked about their favourite and least favourite play areas ...
I’d like to do this type of interview. Maybe I can figure out a way to talk to some children about their favorite play areas.
The buttons activating a call were made large, thirty centimetres wide, and low and cylindrical of shape. They were placed on the ground, to be triggered by stepping upon them.
LOVE the huge buttons on the ground!
Their portable format allows them to be carried around and increase the children's opportunities to create their own playscapes around the prototypes, which provided a useful comparison to the two fixed installations during the study.
The portable tube is about 1 meter (3 feet) long, light enough for a child to carry, and fitted with 4 handles so that it can be shared. It features the same sensors as the other tubes.
Love the portable options. This is super interesting. Allows for much more intimacy.
The results show that the affordances of the landscape surrounding the prototypes defined the play patterns that appeared in multiple ways. In particular, the physical shape of the landscape, and the availability of natural materials shaped the play.
Typically, children would start to play when they heard action-triggered sounds, be it a communicated message or the sound feedback from a tube or a communication node
Finally, the installations feature a ‘honeypot effect’ [3] children playing with an installation function as a strong attractor for other children.
Giving speeches (”Dear fellow citizens...”) was part of the performative play in this stage-like place on top of the mountain
Here, children explored the physical properties of both tube and landscape material in a challenging bodily form of engagement.
Play was also based on the affordances of the buttons, in a way totally disconnected from the communication concept. The buttons were used to jump on, to stand on, to sit on, to look up into the sky to see the flashing lights in the rings, and to listen to the sound feedback. Placing two large buttons next to each other invited children to do synchronized activities on both buttons:
the soundscape carried play value on its own in a more subtle way than the offered interactivity.
However, sound effects were also sometimes problematic and caused disruptions. This we observed in particular in relation to the communication nodes. Frequently, children were trying to establish communication by shouting “Hi! Can you hear me?” or “Who are you? What are you doing?” These communication attempts sometimes disrupted play next to the receiving station. We observed in particular one boy who was playing together with a group of children next to the water communication node. Whenever there was a call, he went to answer, but would just say “Hi!” and then return to his play with the rest of the group. The prototypes coerced him into responding, but his engagement was reluctant and as a result, no communicative play emerged with the other station. Another boy in the same group would instead repeatedly shout: “Shut up!” when somebody was contacting the station.
However, during this day the tube itself played a lesser role in water play than the two rainwater gutters.
Both the portable tube and the communication box tended to be used by one or a few children at a time, thus primarily supporting solitary play and seemingly a feeling of ownership
An example of imaginative play emerged when a boy found out that the installations had been placed in the schoolyard as part of a research project. This child used the tube intensely for the whole testing period during his breaks, exploring the interaction possibilities with the tube and imagining himself as a researcher, using the tube as a research instrument. One boy used the communication box as an announcement station, repeatedly commanding “To the office!” at different positions.
However, there is also an observable novelty effect related to such play activities, in how they decline once the installations have been in place a couple of days. By contrast, immersive play was relatively rare in our study.
Typically, children tend to roam the schoolyard, rapidly moving from one play activity to another. In such settings, the successful design is rather one that offers recurring play, when children come back to an installation over and over again, during the same visit or multiple visits.
One potential explanation for this effect was that open- ended interaction is not enough to sustain fantasy play in the outdoor setting. Compared to the infinite adaptability of nature, through its versatile physical affordances, abundance of varied materials, and ever-changing weather and climate conditions, open-ended interaction is a very limited design tool.
However, we also saw that raw nature is much more adaptable than raw interactivity, even when the installations are designed to offer open-ended play.
Lookup:
DigiFys - landscapes with integrated interactive components
Lappset - Sunu the Ball Wall
Glowsteps
The Body Games
Play-Ware
Keywords:
Imaginary Play / Imaginative Play
open- ended play
Notes after reading:
This article was really important for me to read because to evoked such strong reactions from me and helped me see what I really don’t agree with and what I do agree with. This brings to the focus my love for nature (and the many many opportunities it provides) and my ongoing study of technology while at ITP. And of course, centers that on play, playful experiences and childhood-education.
My reactions really boil down to: what can technology-interventions (in landscapes) do that nature doesn’t already do? In the conclusion of the article, the authors ended up asking some similar questions, but their idea was that they should figure out a way to more seamlessly integrate with the environment and the landscape. I feel like they should just stop developing and understand that if children have access to natural environments (and the time to do so) they will go outside and have imaginative, free play. We don’t need to spin our wheels trying to figure out how to coax them into those actions.. they’ll do them naturally. I think they real question here, is what about children who don’t have access to natural environments..
I found the information about the different ways of using the stationary and mobile interaction tools interesting. The article said that the mobile interaction tool allowed for more opportunities for imaginative play. That the users would take the tool (either alone or with one other person) with them, and imagine themselves as different people ie: a researcher, using the tools on a stump to “research” something. I think this is really interesting. Is it the mobility of the tool? Is it the size? Is it that open-endedness of the use-case of the tool? This brings up a lot of inspiring questions for me about independence, and intimacy.
I think they, independence and intimacy may be the most important qualities for imaginative play.
Photos from Article:
