Design Workshop from Marieke de Vogel with students from Product Design: 10th February 2014
Marieke de Vogel with the third year Product Design students
Marieke de Vogel, Senior Lecturer in Multimedia Design from The HAN University in Holland delivered a ‘pressure cooker’ workshop to our third year Product Design students during a recent trip to the UK. At the moment she is researching adult play with smart designer toys in modern ludic times. The aim of this workshop was to create a playful interactive collaborative experience with the emphasis of developing toy designs. The workshop used padlet (an interactive message wall) and Facebook to support the research, development and evaluation stages of the design process. The students had to design a ‘blank canvas’ toy with a background story and posted the results to a specially opened Facebook page for this occasion. ‘Bob’ the alien from Daniel Frances had the most likes and vas taken forward for development by the entire group.
The students also proposed different opportunities for offline and online play with smart designer toys. Here are some interesting proposals:
- After scanning the QR code of the toy it gives you a link where you can meet more owners of the toy’s family to play and share
- Everyday you get new tasks and new people to meet
- Gives you different ideas of items, which go with the toy
- It gives you people from all around the world and creates a page where all can share
- Tells you how and what care to take of the toy and who you can meet to create new clothes or accessories
- Gives a destination where you can go on a blind date with your toy and others
- Online photo bomb contest
- Digital display cabinet – scan QR codes and adds to account – show off what you have!
- Online community – online chat room, competitions, votes from other users, buy virtual products
- Toys interact with each other and make noises when they meet
The group discussed the difference between adult and children play. Here are some quotes from the students (and food for thought):
“Children’s play is a natural creative outlet where as adult’s play is a form of escapism.” Sean Mobsby
“The difference between adult play is that as a child you play to embrace your imagination, as of now as an adult, you play imagine.” Charlotte Griffiths
“Children play to learn how to use their imagination Whereas adults live to close to reality and struggle to use their imagination.” Hatti Mason
“Adults play would be things like collectables or conversation pieces, even digital/ smart toys to video games. Children’s toys can mainly consist of imagination as they use their imagination to create scenarios and environments. Also, it doesn’t have to be a toy for them to play with it.” Surej Solanki
MdV
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