Playscapes: A design perspective on young children's physical play

Boudewijn Boon, Marco Rozendaal, Marry M. Van den Heuvel-Eibrink, J.J. van der Net, Pieter Jan Stappers

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In early childhood, children develop motor skills that form the basis of their future physical activities. This development can stagnate when children face long-term hospitalization due to injury or disease. Most interventions to facilitate their physical development are built on exercise and structured play, and have ignored the value of spontaneous and unstructured play. For this reason, we introduce 'Playscapes' as a design perspective on young children's physical play. Playscapes is inspired by outdoor play, and accounts for three qualities: bodily play, dispersed play and free play. These qualities can help interaction designers to generate designs that help children playfully develop physical competence. The design perspective is used for developing two design interventions specifically for children with cancer. To point out the merits of Playscapes, the design interventions are compared with two exercise-based interventions. Finally, challenges and future steps are discussed for further developing Playscapes.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children( IDC 2016)
EditorsJ.C. Read, P. Stenton
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages181-189
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9781450343138
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event IDC 2016 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children - Manchester, United Kingdom
Duration: 21 Jun 201624 Jun 2016

Conference

Conference IDC 2016 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityManchester
Period21/06/1624/06/16

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