In conjunction with the national organization Design for America, I co-led a team of Brown and RISD students on a project we called "Work & Play". This team consisted of myself, Yilan Sun, Annie Chen, Mollie Redman, Sophie Chen, and Cherilyn Tan. Our goal was to investigate how children integrate play into public spaces.
We began by investigating both places in which play is meant to occur - such as playgrounds and the Providence Children's museum - and places where play is not encouraged, such as the Providence Place Mall. Through this, we concluded that:
children are inclined to play with others
playing pretend happens just as much as playing with a tangible object
children can and will play anywhere
children tend to play on their own terms and have their own definitions of what they think is fun.
Ideation and brainstorming on this project revolved around the state of the American education system, how it intersects with play, and what we could do to bring these to public spaces. Overall, we were asking ourselves "How can we make play and education accessible to children of all socioeconomic statuses, & integrate soft skills and play into the rigid education system?"
Though this project never made it to the high-fidelity prototype stage, we gained important insight into how to allow children of any socioeconomic status to make any space into a world of play. By looking at add-ons for existing objects, school workshops that help integrate play and soft skills into education, and public furniture that serves to benefit both children and adults, us students learned about the importance of keeping our youthful creativity alive and allowing for play to intersect all forms of design.
