Arts Thread

Play is such a fundamental part of being a child. It helps us make sense of ourselves, others, and the world we engage in. It helps us to become spontaneous, creative, imaginative, and honest. Even though most of these traits follow us into adulthood, it seems that over time we stop engaging and learning through the power of play, as it gets neglected and deprioritized. We forget how to play. Instead, we end up dismissing play as frivolous, irrelevant, and a waste of time. For my thesis, I explored if we could somehow reintroduce this trait to adults and help them rediscover this imaginative exploration and approach to life. Through extensive user inclusion, I learned that adult playfulness is about diverging and converging, and exploring new possibilities. Where adults see a sidewalk, kids see a playground or even dangerously hot lava. Children are excellent at diverging and adults are great at converging. But like any good design process, we need both. We need to become more explorative and less serious. We need to be able to jump out of daily routines, put our rigid A-B thinking aside, and enjoy the journey and the process just as much if not even more than the outcome.