Life Play Journeys
Playful method for learning
A play design method that encourage students, practitioners and researchers to engage with play experiences from their own life, sharing these through collaborative mappings in groups or teams to dissect play characteristics. These mappings can be applied to help imagination or breakthroughs when designing play concepts.
Preparation
1-2 hours for journey templates and supplementary materials such as pictures, illustrations or more tangible materials.
Activity
30 min to explore past play journeys
30 min to discuss characteristics of play experiences in groups by selecting 1-2 examples per participant. Listeners write down keywords for these characteristics.
30 min to create a plenum Wall-cloud with keywords which collect and illustrate the characteristics the full class has identified
Follow-up
The cloud is used either early on in projects as a way to understand and dissect play experiences, and later on in ideation when first ideas are on the table as a way to enhance imagination of concepts.
Materials
A2 papers sheets, markers, selected tangible materials, Sticky notes for Wall cloud.
Researchers/Facilitators
Facilitates the process and helps out along the way.
Participants
Between 3-10 groups of 3-4 participants.
Expected Output
Imaginative play concepts based on universal play characteristics.
To grasp what constitutes play experiences and to find inspiration when stuck in ideation it is worthwhile to create share collaborative mappings of past play experiences. Tapping into the history of a full class of students’ past play experiences allows for a rich relational understanding as well as a powerful mean to remember what such experiences consisted of – why do the participants still remember these examples? LIFE PLAY JOURNEYS allows for such an investigation through simple means and without preparation.
The method has been applied in several MA Play design classes and as part of conferences as well as continuing education.