Play II

The first day of the Athens week was about Presence Desing and the YUPTA framework
One of the main things we have to consider are :
Place (Here/Not Here)
Time (Now/Not Now)
Person (You/Not You)
Action
What is alos very important is the connection between them.

Two questions come to my mind. At what time will parents and their children use our special playground? And how could we help them to save more time to play with their children?

First of all, a parent´s day can be approximately divided in three parts: time to work, time to take care of their children and finaly, time to take care of themself. We must target the two last categories . They will use our playground during the week after work and weekends. By building playgrounds next to workplaces, we can help them to avoid the waste of time in journeys.

This article is based on Playground design task that is given to us in the presence design program. I am in the Play team and our objective is to design a playground which caters people of every age, involves children and adults to have good time together. get solution for problems like solving issues like trust, time , place and smart activities.

My focus would be on How to Involve Children and Adult together??? make it interactive and fun for everyone.

Adults need some quality time with their parents but current designs don't give the opportunity. Now every child find entertainment but parents play only the role of spectators.
Cool activities that maybe add some element of education. Elders can contribute in developing learning habits in children.
Maybe we can harness different knowledge of people and make them share knowledge with each other.

Woidy- Short summery of activity

During the Athens Week at TUD about Presence Design our group is concentrated on the keyword “Play”, in the context of designing an area where children and adults can play and can be entertained.
We also have to take into consideration the following keywords:
You/not You
Now
Here
Action
First we have to find a typical situation and to sum up some problems which are related to it.
Our idea was a "Playground for every age" in a big city like New York. So we came to the following problems:
1. Security/Trust
2. Place
3. Time
4. Entertainment, Activity, Education
5. Interactivity between children and adults

My theme is Entertainment, Activity and Education. First I have to concentrate on two points. One is the relationship and interactivity between children, how to occupy them, and how can they learn things in a playing manner. The second point is the relationship between adults. How can adults be entertained to get to know each other, while their children are playing. So it has a social background and connects people.

play place - new type of urban space

It should be a new type of urban space in the center of big cities like New York. Busy cities with a lot of people who need pleasant place for playing with their children and also place for relaxation. Place when they'll forget difficulties in their job and could become once more children and participate in the play. This place should integrate parents into plays.

The play place could be in a park, street or square... It could combine advantages of all of them. To avoid a long journey the play place should be situated near to work or housing.

The main goal of our project is to create a new urban space where several generations can have fun together on the same activities.

But it creats a few problems of security that need to be overcome. Our project implies that the activities have to be designed for adults and kids, that don't have the same height, strength.... How creat a machine fun for adults but safe for a young child?
Moreover, in the common playgrounds there is an unconsious distinction between the space reserved for kids, represented by the games, and the one for adults around this area. In this scheme an adult alone in the play area will be quickly spotted and seen as a threat for childrean. Whereas in our new space there won´t be a distinction between adults´space and kids´space, so bad intention will be harder to guess. We need to bring answers to these problems to make feel confident parents when they will bring their child in this new space.

1. Attractive: looking good
2. Intuitive: ease of use
3. Interactive: can you perform action?
4. Rewarding: what's the prize?
5. Challenging: the bigger the challenge, the more tangible is the reward
6. Unpredictable: does it surprise you?
7. Not for real: the imaginary world, whether you play “World of Warcraft” or play with dolls
8. With humour: a good laugh adds to the fun!
9. Immersive: a really good game absorbs you completely
10. Social: playing together doubles the fun

brainstorming

<So that to avoid kidnapping - you could make a way that a kid can just go out with his parent or the person he came in with. Maybe security at the entrance - congestrons when clossing maybe? Look like "jail"? People may not like it?>

We don't want parent to leave his child on our new play place. They will come to this new public space in order to play together. Parent won’t leave his kid alone. Moreover this place will be public and very open space visible from everywhere. There won’t be dark corners. It has to be very clear and safe place. All this attributes should avoid dangerous cases like kidnapping, pickpockets and any other threats.

1. How you are going to integrate the workplace with the playground?
Its near the office.
It may gives a cooperation between the society who makes the playground and the company. If companies take our idea for themselves so it is also possible.
We also can consider the "Shelter" group, to integrate the building for children and for adults.

2. Will the playgrounds be public or private?
Our playground is public. But when companys took our design for themselves they can make it as they want.

3. Is there a place for a playground in a busy city?
It is samll enough, to fit in. Maybe instead of a parking place.

Some questions

1. How do we involve work in play? Can play be around workplace or smart work places designed to involve play factor in them?

2. Can the games from past help? in bringing people together to play??

3. Building stuff like canal or stone wall can be good group activity?

4. Can you involve family competitions in play?

5. Did you consider education with the play?

Attractive for anyone?

Is it really possible to find a single activity which will attract both parents and children?

In order to develop through games, children need time to play alone, with companions of their age but also with adults.

Solitary games enables children to travel in a fantasy world that he alone controls and promote independence. Those with friends give them the chance to learn to interact with other people, learn to compromise and be stimulated in different interests of theirs.
And why parents take such a prominent place in their games? Parents must upgrade to their child - literally and figuratively - to open their mind to his universe. It enables them to observe and to better know their child's interests, skills and small challenges. Take time to stop and play with your child make him feel important to you. Moreover a child can feel insecurity preventing him from exploring the world outside and becoming independant. Playing with your child has a direct impact on his self confidence.

1. How can we combine playing and teaching?
The challange for us is, that our playground will have different parts:
1. Fun
2. Education
3. Energy
4. Activity
Idea 1
Entertainment:
Fun, Together, Education, Surprising, Challange
Make two teams, they play against each other:
=Fun, Challange, Together
Who wins get something

biomimicry: how you can get an idea from nature.
In our workshop we first stated with a short but very interesing introduction about nature and similiar thing in technology.
Than we did a workshop, where we used all our senses like smell, touch, feel, hear, tast and finally see. We recognised that feeling something gives total new and more information than just to see something.
We learned that one of the main things of biomimicry is to integrate Biology in Design, scoping, creating and evaluating
First we identify our poroblem than we tried to define the challenge. We presented our concept and defined the desing brief. Finally we discover natural models and abstract and sketch design principles. At the end we emulate the design ideas.
One of the idea was to use nature to produce enery, or to use activity of human to produce energy.
Finally we tried to find a name for our group.

Meeting with concepts of bio mimicry and actuall understand how to add it up when making designs. How to identify whats to find and what is to be captured.

Origin of plaYce and saying "hello" to biomimicry design.

Yes, We came up with a name for our place which is plaYce, A play place in busy city.
As the concept goes plaYce is place for all, no matter of age.

We have seen how things work in presence design and now it was time to work with nature. Biomimicry
is one aspect which has great things to offer for us. Everything that exists in ecosystem performed some
function and some are for attraction, some for safety, some of stability or for survival in the
nature.

Currently designers across the globe are trying to involve or mock the designs readily available in nature
to their work to have best resource management and better productivity with less harm to nature.
Keeping all the aspects in mind we started our search for aspects that help us understand nature and take something
for plaYce.

We came up with three main functions that we wanted. They were namely Attraction, Bonding and place dimension.

Our team had some cool ideas of having place which supports many seasons, having solar panels to self sustain
for small need of power. Having activities which produce energy and convert it in other form
of light or sound, which makes plaYce more fun and attractive. At the same time it explains principle of
conservation of energy, storing energy and converting it which are main educational aspects.
Teach children how to learn from small thing but at same time making it fun for all.

Using recycled things for making small puzzles or small games should add sense of reponsibility to all
while actually giving them a great time.

My focus in our group is to try and touch the angle of increasing bonding between parents and children.
Also between different people of community.
It has more of psychological value then physical so it does not have real model that we mimic
from nature but there is of course more to learn from communal animals like gorillas or ants.
Still our focus would be more on involving people for doing different activities that are
fun and make bonding with people easier.

A name for our project

Our project needed a name. We imagined a new kind of place, we wanted to give it a name which defines a new space in a city. By mixing the verb PLAY and the noun PLACE, we created a new word which definitely fits to our project: PLAYCE.

This is about the final presentation that we made for plaYce in which we defined our challenges and finally came up with solution that matches up with all other teams needs and we found our plaYce in the grid.

After learning presence design and biomimicry we tried to integrate both the design aspect in
our design of plaYce. After having the concept cleared out for what we need and what we can offer
we went shopping to offer our services to different terms involved in other designs like shelter, water and
transport.

We realized out project fits the need of all of the other teams and we were really able to make design
to suggest a feasible plan. A structure design inspired by design of tree, having solar panel and water harvest
to be self sustainable just like a tree.
Our team designed activities touching upon topics like conservation of energy, some simple principles of
physics which are not just for fun but adds a great dimension of learning and passing message of
being responsible about use of energy.

I will introduce the plaYce and why we thought about the concept? How it is better than something that
already exists in the parks and other places? Why we need to have such places?

Simple answers would be to try and get people being connected and having fun together irrespective of their
age difference. For adults it is fun, relaxing and for young ones its a learning exercise, at the same time they are together
and spend some quality time. By using biomimicry we allow people to actually make biomimicry part of their lives
and make them think more towards similar concepts, therefore in a way the plaYce develops sense
of responsibility as well.

As i mentioned earlier we propose some great ideas which are simple yet very interesting and meets
all our goals. We hope that plaYce come to reality because at one point of time society needs
such places to have positive impact on society in many ways.

This paragraph shows different examples how to combine playing and education with using the tools of presence desing and biomimicry.
As you can see you could combine that parents play with their children in the same time by produce energy and ther is fun and education at the same time