#urbanplaygrounds

Lack of Public Spaces Designed for Children

Many parents and caregivers in Europe may not be surprised to learn that less than 10% of public spaces in many cities are specifically designed for younger children. In fact, finding a home with a safe communal green space or a playground within walking distance often presents a significant challenge. Even when such spaces are available, playgrounds are often single-purpose or neglected, with broken or unsafe equipment, insufficient shade, or inadequate shelter. These factors make the experience less appealing for children and may limit opportunities for free and safe play. The Importance of Playgrounds as Social Spaces Playgrounds serve a role far beyond being mere places to play. They are vital social spaces that allow families to meet, turn strangers into neighbors, and foster trust among community members. From this perspective, playgrounds can be seen as an integral part of civic infrastructure, much like transport networks, cultural facilities, and energy services. Initiatives to Enhance Children's Infrastructure One prominent project in this field is the "Playcontinent" initiative, which aims to rethink playground design and make it more innovative and inclusive. This project emphasizes the importance of investing in playgrounds and transforming them into safe, enjoyable, and inspiring spaces for children, while taking into account the social and cultural aspects of the local community.

The Impact of Urban Priorities on Children

The report published online argues that prioritizing cars and commerce at the expense of open spaces was a short-sighted move. Studies have shown that children who have daily access to high-quality play environments are 30% more active, achieve better academic performance, and experience lower levels of stress and social isolation. In contrast, a lack of play infrastructure is associated with higher obesity rates and widening social gaps, highlighting that urban planning directly affects children’s physical health as well as their psychological and social well-being. Parks and Green Spaces as Part of Infrastructure The report emphasizes that parks and green spaces are not merely recreational facilities; they are essential components of resilient and healthy infrastructure. They help cool cities, absorb rainwater, and provide shelter during extreme weather conditions. Environmental Benefits of Green Spaces Moreover, urban green spaces contribute to improving the local climate, potentially lowering city temperatures by an average of 1°C, with local effects reaching up to 2.9°C. This is particularly important as Europe faces recurring heatwaves, underscoring the vital environmental role these spaces play in supporting urban sustainability.

Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Develop Play Infrastructure

To design the "Playcontinent" plan, the 21st Europe Foundation collaborated with the Copenhagen-based architectural office Spacon, alongside experts in play, infrastructure, and public policy. The goal of this collaboration is to ensure that the project serves as a practical and implementable framework, rather than merely a theoretical vision. This proposal was recently unveiled during a summit held at the Danish Museum of Design, with the hope that governments, cities, and institutions will respond to this vital challenge. Playgrounds as Influential Elements in Society and Culture Nikoline Dierup Carlsen from Spacon explains that playgrounds are among the few public spaces whose design directly impacts childhood, society, and culture. When playgrounds are approached with the same ambition and attention given to museums or transport hubs, they can transform into distinctive civic landmarks that reflect the identity of the current century. Similarly, these public spaces can become prominent features shaping the future of communities by creating safe, innovative, and inclusive environments for children that foster social interaction and support psychological and cultural development.

Multifunctional Play Equipment

The modular play equipment is designed to accommodate various modes of play, including physical activity, social and collaborative play, and imaginative and reflective play. This diversity allows playgrounds to remain relevant across different age groups while encouraging children to explore their physical, social, and creative skills. Environmental Sustainability and Local Design The components rely on local materials whenever possible, such as timber, recycled metals, and natural composites. This approach reduces the carbon footprint and ensures each site aligns with its regional context. Additionally, the flat-pack design allows equipment to be deployed quickly across urban, suburban, and rural areas, with adaptability as neighborhoods evolve over time. Investing in Play Infrastructure The report notes that allocating a small percentage of infrastructure budgets, just 1%, could fund over 100,000 new playgrounds within a single decade, significantly reshaping childhood experiences in Europe. It emphasizes that investing in play is not a luxury but a necessity for the development of children and communities, even during times of war or economic crisis.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

🎉 Playground of the Month (POM)! 🎉 🌍 Division: North East Recreation - serving NY 💥 Project Feature of the Month: PS96Q School, Queens NY In the heart of New York City and surrounding areas, where space is at a premium and creativity is key, this vibrant new playground rises to the challenge! With over 1,700 schools across NYC area, designing for tight urban spaces requires smart, thoughtful solutions. By listening closely to the school's needs and vision, we created a multi-faceted, multi-age play environment that makes the most of every square foot. We hope the students of PS96Q enjoy this dynamic new space—and that it brings them years of joy, adventure, and movement!

The last three weeks have flown by so fast! I am sitting here, coming to the end of the last week of uni - with mostly of my work done. The only stuff our group needs to do now is to set up our studio - add all the extra bits we have needed to complete such as the process book, children’s book, posters printed etc.. I have also realised that this could potentially be my last blog post for the semester, which is a scary thought.

A little update on what has happened over the last 3 weeks leading up to submission (which is 4 days away):

Website - Our friend, Walter has kindly designed and coded our website for us who specialises in this and gets paid for doing tones of design work. He developed a website in a few days that showcased our personality as individuals, as well as the brand, Doodle Dolls.

Children’s book - Katriel and Sophie have been working on this section, with Kat doing all of the drawings and colouring, and Sophie getting it binded this week. 

Packaging - Sophie was working hard on completing this, though she unfortunately didn’t feel well near the end of week 12 - therefore Amanda took over and started to design the inside and cover pages for the packaging. We kept to the same colour scheme as the website. 

Statement Writing - our group managed to write up the first 500 words of each statement that was the same - to then go into the next few hundred talking about our individual processes and concepts/research. Ben gave us a lot of feedback on this and stated that writing the first section as a group would be the best way to keep it consistent. 

Portfolio/blog Update - I have updated my portfolio, with a new design and new information on Doodle Dolls. I am currently updating my blog.

Posters - This task has taken a lot longer to process, where I have gone around in circles for the past week developing these. After developing our three posters (Two freestanding poster banners that will stand on the side of our exhibition + a huge wall banner with all of our contact info on. All posters will be 600x1600mm and will be printed externally), we were able to gather feedback from a couple of lecturers. Ben’s feedback was by far the most critical and comprehensive. We did unfortunately gather this feedback after we sent the posters to the printers, resulting in a stressful email to the company asking them to delay our printing until we could make the changes. We learnt our lesson straight away - to wait for all feedback before we sent them off to printers. About 24 hours later, Amanda and I came up with new and improved versions. We don’t think they are perfect because we were pushing for time, but we hope the lecturers especially Ben, appreciates the improvement.

Process Book - This was my job over the last two weeks, which included the collation of everyones write ups for each section of the book (we had roughly 80 pages worth of content - including images and references). This process was also a lengthy one, where I individually designed each page for the book, labelling each file in order so I could combine the pdf’s, and then print for my first iteration to take back to the team and get any feedback. A few things were changed, though we kept a lot of what Ben’s feedback was from the posters, and I tired to implement certain aspects into the book, to follow the theme and communication. This will be getting printed tomorrow in time for Monday’s deadline. 

The final bits and pieces we are finishing off now is our construction of our exhibition and the final bits like printing out our statements for assessment etc. 4 more days left and we will be all done! Very excited!

Doodle Dolls produce sustainable felt dolls designed from the drawings of underprivileged children, that gives back a percentage of the profits on the sale of the dolls to the artist. (Brown, Clarke, McIntyre & Worrall, 2017) This concept is developed through studio with four students, Amanda Brown, Katriel Worrall, Sophie McIntyre and myself, Kylie Clarke. Through my Play and Interaction paper, I am working on a sub-project alone, in which the adult can upload their child’s favourite drawing to the Doodle Dolls app, animate and then explore the world full of fun challenges and games.

Doodle Dolls was created to assist, child poverty, and sustainability and textile waste research:

Child poverty rates are increasing at a rapid rate. As Roy (2016) states, “one-third of the country’s children, or 300,000, now live below the poverty line – 45,000 more than a year ago”. Doodle Dolls is a direct response to this issue, with the aim of providing aid to those in poverty, one child at a time.

Secondly, figures obtained by the Ministry for the Environment show that, every year, the textile waste present in New Zealand’s landfills increases by around a hundred million kilos (The Wireless, 2014).

Doodle Dolls will turn unwanted textiles that cannot easily be resold into new, desirable products that will minimise the amount of landfill waste.

My initial feedback in week 9 was extremely useful and thorough. I discovered that my designs were well developed for a one person team, though I needed to research more into the challenge and gaming aspect of the application. Thomas W. Malone (1982) looked into two key questions around gaming user interfaces:

Why are games so captivating? and,

How can the features that make computer games captivating be used to make other user interfaces interesting and enjoyable to use?

To make a game a ‘challenge’, there needs to be a goal where the outcome is uncertain. Creating this for a child’s app for 5-8 year olds can be rather difficult, keeping in mind the ability of a 5 year old and an 8 year old varies (Malone, 1982). This is why I have created three early prototypes of three types of games that could be included, but not limited to; a multiple click game, platform game and a social network simulation game. If given enough time, or had another person on my team, I would have playtested these a lot more and made sure the three flowed together, and if not, created a fourth game option.

Alongside the challenging element, they also need to be able to hold the child’s attention and keep them coming back to the app. Chris Crawford states that a very important motivation to play an engaging game is fantasy fulfillment. Taking the child away from the real world and placing them in the fantasy world alongside their animated character allows the child to “escape” and to experience “symbolic exploration”. It is critical for humans, especially children to explore in a made up world where they can recreate “our art and our games”. (Crawford, 1984). My aesthetic is simple, yet requires full imagination with the challenges included such as the ability to gain points/coins/apples and level up through the child’s chosen way in the exciting and interactive world.

A very similar example of an interactive child’s ‘toy-to-life’ application is Play-Doh Touch. This company uses a special product with their app to connect the children with their physical creativity and their explorative traits. Play-Doh Touch uses a special stamper to create a character with the child’s chosen coloured play-doh. Their parent then scans in the character and is animated instantly, ready to be interacted and explored with (Perez, 2016).

One of the great aspects of this product is the ability to create a well crafted character no matter how inaccurate the toddler is at building their play-doh masterpiece. This allows ALL children to be able to scan in an animal without worrying if it will work, meaning the reliability of the process is accurate which is a theory I should have implemented into my application. At 5-8 years old, many kids will not be able to draw a clear image therefore making the animation process in the application very difficult. In future, to prevent this occurring, Doodle Dolls can create a variation of character colouring pages on their website, so the parent can print it out and let the children colour them in. This means the images will already be pre selected and all that needs to be generated is the colours used by the child to create a unique design.

An aspect that users did not enjoy though was the non-challenging aesthetic. Perez (2016) states, “Play-doh fails to create a compelling world after the whizz-ban glee of its digital trickery wears off.” Other than the initial scan, there is no challenge in the game and nothing for the children to work towards, therefore falling short of enjoyment and repetitive play. She also states that her child quotes “Mommy, this is boring.” There was no advanced gaming technique that allowed her child to progress through the game.

The idea of a colouring page is used in the Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life - Amazing Creations Playroom area. This brand new section in Kelly Tarltons are targeted for toddlers to older children, where they can draw their own fish, scan it into their machine and watch it come alive on the huge interactive screen in front of them. This area is perfect as a resting point, where parents can grab a coffee and relax/chat while their child enjoys their time at Kelly Tarltons (Kelly Tarltons, n.d.).

I managed to view this exhibit in early 2017 when it was just released. It was a relaxing room to be in, where children were scattered around the tables, using the crayons and drawings provided. The environment was a relaxing one where some parents were scattered amongst the children, helping them create their masterpiece, where others left their children to their own creativity and took advantage of the coffee in the area. The idea of the parents helping their children colour in, is the idea I wanted to add to my application. I want to encourage this relationship over art, then through a screen, encouraging the continuation of play with their creation. Unfortunately, my downfall was time, and I was unable to playtest this theory and whether it was going to work with families behind closed doors, compared to an interactive installation in a public space.

In week 9, Ben mentioned that I needed to establish whether the app is a ‘challenging game’ or a ‘toy’. From the research that I have found, which is backed up through the Play-Doh Touch research and limited playtesting, I have discovered that the best interaction is a simple challenging one where the child develops their skills and creativity by aiming towards a simple goal. There is always development in the app which means the usage will be consistent, the child won’t get bored and the opportunities are endless. Of course, this is a Doodle Dolls 2.0 idea, so all these theories I have established and contextualised are still in prototype stage. This means that certain aspects may not work due to restrictions in playtesting. The lack of game testing is also the main thing I could have changed through the semester, which I know would have enhanced my design decisions.

REFERENCES:

Brown, A. Clarke, K., McIntyre, S. Worrall, K. (2017). AUT University: Doodle Dolls. Auckland. Unfinished student project.

Crawford, C. (1984). The art of computer game design.

Kelly Tarltons. (n.d.). Amazing creations | kelly tarlton's sea life aquarium. Retrieved from https://www.kellytarltons.co.nz/explore/amazing-creations/

Malone, T. W. (1982, March). Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. In Proceedings of the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 63-68). ACM.

Perez, S. (2016, November 18). Hands-on with play-doh touch, the app that brings kids’ creations to life | techcrunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/hands-on-with-play-doh-touch-the-app-that-brings-kids-creations-to-life/

Roy, E. A. (2016). New Zealand's most shameful secret: 'we have normalised child poverty'. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/16/new-zealands-most-shameful-secret-we-have-normalised-child-poverty

Week 10, went by so fast, and I feel like I am falling behind slightly. I’ve managed to keep up all semester but these final weeks, for all of my papers are taking a toll, especially my blogging and research. 

Monday’s lecture class, felt quite slow. We felt rather lost and felt like we needed to regain our momentum, mainly by organising the tasks still needed to be done for the rest of the semester. With only three members of the team present, it was rather difficult to gage exactly what needed to be done, and divide the tasks up so we stay on track. Our way of making sure everyone was in the loop, was to use Slack and Trello, which we have all found extremely useful over the last 10 weeks. 

During the tutor swap in week 9, Clint mentioned to many groups that the best thing to do from now, is to write down everything that needs to be completed and write a day-by-day or a week-by-week schedule. Above, is our choose schedule. We choose to divide everything up by weeks, so we knew what had to be completed by the end of the week considering all of our busy schedules working and other papers. I find this extremely helpful, because I know what I need to do, to keep the team afloat for these final weeks. 

TASKS:

Over the week, I have started putting together examples of Instagram and Facebook ads for our marketing example for the process book, which will be shown in the exhibition. We have talked about including an example of a celebrity ambassador (such as Lorde) who can represent us to a wide audience. 

I have also complied all of my app design ideas (through play and interaction) onto one page and made sure they are ready to be printed for the exhibition, as well as a DPS for the process book. I have received good feedback from my group about the design and are excited to showcase them on the night of the exhibition. 

To other members of the group - We have unfortunately had a bit of a hiccup with one member in the team this week. The task was to complete a logo for our company. The other three members in the group gave our likes + slight disadvantages of certain aspects of the logo, which has resulted in tension and has made it had to give constructive criticism to said member. Our job as a group is all about being on the same page and making sure everyone is happy with the design, not just one person. The issue has been left for now, until Monday week 11, when Amanda will talk to said member calmly to try have our group finish this semester on a high.

On a higher note, Kat and Amanda took our dolls to the AUT day care end of Week 10 and the kids apparently loved the dolls! They were scratched, thrown, hit and pulled, really testing the durability of them - but they have managed to withstand such a beating, which we are super happy and surprised about considering they were only made as a prototype. More info on this will surely be on their blogs and in my blog next week. 

Week 9 was one that went by super fast, but Amanda and I managed to finish the Accelerator Challenge document for Doodle Dolls as well as our group getting great feedback from Clint during the Tutor Swap in Monday’s class session. 

Accelerator Document:

Week 9 marked the last of 5 Accelerator workshops ready to prepare us for the 10 page document. We went over the solutions, and advantages through marketing examples for our business, coming with with many different post it notes containing heaps of marketing examples that we then took back with us and filled out our marketing and advantage document slides. 

Amanda and I worked for two weeks putting the core of the information into our shared google docs slide. This worked extremely well especially when we were working right next to each other. Communication worked well + we could see what each other was working on therefore there were no overlaps/repeated work etc. Once it was 90% complete, We broke away end of the week, where Amanda worked on polishing the content for the last 10% and I worked on the design and infographics ready to be professionally sent into submission. 

Here are a few of the slide designs that I created:

Title page: Page One (have removed Amanda’s number as I am posting on a public forum)

Solution: Page Four

Market Analysis: Page Six

Milestones/Timeline: Page Ten

I trialled a few front pages first, using our photographs of the dolls as the background, though I wasn’t happy with the way it looked. The photograph made it look unprofessional, and the colours made the page look dull and not very well thought out. The text was easy to read, (so I carried those fonts through) but it didn’t grab my attention. Below is the initial first draft design:

Not being happy with this design, I researched into what did look good in a professional presentation slide and I came to the conclusion that less was more. Picking only a couple of colours was best and then being able to convey our content through skilled, yet simple design was the best bet. This is when I started creating the blue/grey and green slides above. Group was super happy with them, which resulted in a hand in 2 days prior to the due date. Being ahead of time felt good. 

Tutor Swap:

Week 9 - Monday session was a success. We got some really good feedback from Clint, who loved our idea, and suggested we were taking on far too much, though we seem to be on track which is fantastic. Again, he stated sometimes, less is more so when we pitched about all of the things we wanted to include in our studio exhibition, he was extremely overwhelmed and said there were far too many aspects to show that would all be a half way / mediocre prototype mark. Having less things, but having them done well as prototypes was the way to go. We agreed and started to plan our exhibition. 

We are currently sitting at these things to include:

Process book (including all of our business and marketing research + design processes and development) including our statements

Child’s reading book - We may only have the front and back page + a DPS (Double Page Spread) as an example at this stage.

Logo + Packaging/Labels and Business cards to give out on the night

Kat’s Halloween dolls made through Play and Interaction

Kylie’s app design created through Play and Interaction

Poster (could be in a banner form)

Six components could still be pushing it slightly, but we have cut out the animation and the video we planed to make of Ben receiving his doll. We felt both of these things were nice to have in, but were not necessary for exhibition night and would be part of our Doodle Dolls 2.0.

Week 9 was an important one for all of my papers, as all deadlines seemed to land at the same time. Week 9 crit for Play and Interaction was super helpful and i was able to gather some good critique from Ben and some students. Ben mentioned that I had done enough work on these designs and from no on, use the last three weeks to reflect, research and iterate. I plan to look into some children games, as well as research into exactly what parents and children need/want from a game. 

Below are my 2nd/3rd iteration designs created over the past two weeks that I showed at crit. I have commented on design myself, showing bits I am not happy with, what was different from each design and the differences/benefits of each one. 

Start up page:

Sign Up/Sign In pages:

Upload Drawing Page:

Entire Map Page:

Game One Example (Farmville type game - growing plants and levelling up):

Game Two (Click as many time as they can type game) and Game Three (platform/multiplayer game) Examples:

As mentioned above, crit was extremely helpful. Ben asked an interesting question about whether I was aiming the app to be a game? or a toy? I hadn’t really thought about it up until then, and I still not sure. This is what the next few weeks are for - to research this and test it out. 

I don’t necessarily need to make the app a ‘challenge’. As I am aiming it for children between 5-8yrs, the children are not at the age yet where there only mission is to win. They still want to have fun and enjoy the game, but the games themselves still need to b slightly challenging. 

A student from the class, mentioned I should also start playing some kids games, to get some ideas of how they work and also design. I think this will be extremely helpful knowledge to get seeing as the flow in my opinion, isn’t quite working the way i’d like it to. Another thing to look into and play test for the next three weeks before the youtube video and slides are due. 

Last thing I’d like to look into in regards to the flow AND connecting the game to the child in a challenging yet fun way. Claudine mentioned the idea about inputing age and changing the level content for that particular age. I want to see if this is something that can be done, and if so, how? If I can find some games that already do this, then even better. 

Ben mentioned a tv series called Sarah and Duck that I would also like to look into soon. 

This week’s work was a tiny bit slow, considering Kat and Sophie were off in Wellington for the majority of the week for WOW. That being said, we had a solid few hours of work and meeting’s on Monday to get us through the week, which leads into the crit for next week with Clint. 

Meeting with Tabatha:

Monday morning marked a new week where we met with a girl called Tabatha that had replied to our ad a while back from the AUT website. We have had two people email us saying they were interested in our idea. We decided to meet with Tabatha mainly because her expertise could be helpful for the development of the dolls, and maybe creating some backup solutions as to how we will be making the dolls if the felt loom idea turns out to fail. She was rather shy but her expertise lead us to inviting her up to our studio on Friday and sit down and work with myself and Amanda, putting together our Accelerator document. 

Through the week, we discussed her in amongst our group and decided that it was too early for her to be involved. We emailed her, giving the news though saying we still wanted to remain in contact for future reference. At the moment, we are starting to put our marketing plan and business model together which she didn’t seem to have any knowledge in which was what we expected. It’s good to keep our options open and if anyone comes along that can help us at that moment, then we will definitely grab that opportunity. 

Fourth Accelerator Workshop:

Amanda and I also attended the fourth workshop for the program, Prototyping. This workshop was rather short, and probably the least informative one so far. What we did find out though was to make sure we have a good prototype or something to show by the pitch night if we were to get through to that stage. Prototypes really help with selling the idea, especially when the judges can see and feel what it is exactly we make in Doodle Dolls. 

Accelerator Document Development:

Friday was a spare day, so Amanda and I met to discuss the document that we are having to create. It is 10 pages long with roughly 300-500 words on each page, describing the associated topic. By sitting down and trying to nail this out rather quickly (the due date (oct 8) has really snuck up on us) I have realised that I am a much more productive person in the morning before lunch when I have to sit and write constructive content. Using this knowledge, we will be meeting early Wednesday next week to continue our document and make sure it is up to the standard we want. We will also be touching base with Kat and Sophie next Monday and showing them our progress + if they have anything they would like to add. 

Crit Presentation:

Amanda and I also started putting together our presentation for Week 9. Ben stated that the best idea would be to put together a slideshow, just like week 3 so we can clearly show what our idea is, what we have been doing and what direction we are heading in. We found that writing up the bits for the Accelerator program (image above) really helped us with the content and gave us a clear path as how to fill the presentation and say it in a way that is clear and concise. This is extremely important when discussing our idea to someone who hasn’t heard it yet. Heaps of work to do.