Play and Design as resistance in an efficient system

How do you design when the goal is not efficiency, but humanity? When the solution is not necessarily to remove what is difficult, but to create space to be in it?

With her appointment as associate professor at Kolding School of Design, Sofie Kinch brings attention to play as an action-oriented and ethical design practice in encounters with vulnerability and illness. Her research moves into healthcare and other institutional settings where children and young people often have the least influence, and explores how playful design can open up new forms of participation, dialogue and hope:

- As an associate professor in Play Design, I work with how designers can engage with situations shaped by vulnerability, inequality and power. Over the past two years, I have led the research and development programme Playful Care at the Lab for Play Design at Kolding School of Design, and my work is first and foremost for those who have the least influence over the systems they are part of: children, young people and families in vulnerable life situations. This might, for example, involve how young people with mental health conditions can be included in conversations about medication, or how pre-teens can be supported in navigating a taboo use of pornography.

- Play has a particular potential in healthcare because it can be used as a design strategy to open up new forms of participation and dialogue that are otherwise difficult to establish in institutional settings. Play does not necessarily make situations more fun or less serious, but it can make difficult situations more manageable for those who are in them, explains Sofie Kinch.

Insisting on children’s and young people’s perspectives
Sofie Kinch’s work is particularly about insisting on children’s and young people’s perspectives in systems that are often designed for adults, with a focus on the progression of treatment. Through playful and caring design practices, she hopes to contribute to children and young people not merely being adapted to treatment systems, but being able to participate, negotiate and create meaning from a shared starting point.

- As a play designer in healthcare, I consciously work to create conditions in which play can emerge in both planned and spontaneous encounters. Through, for example, the design of micro-disruptions, I challenge established roles, narratives and patterns of action, and create small shifts in otherwise locked situations. These shifts can spark curiosity, activate the imagination and create temporary pauses in the seriousness of illness. And I believe that is important in giving children and young people the opportunity to take part in their illness or treatment on their own terms, says Sofie Kinch.

Redefining the role of design
Sofie Kinch hopes that her work can contribute to a shift in how we understand the role of design in society:

- When I teach, I am interested in redefining the role of the designer and breaking away from the linear and rational thinking that has characterised our field since the Enlightenment. We are facing a future that does not only call for smart solutions, but very much also for responsible participation in a world that is complex, unresolved and deeply relational, says Sofie Kinch.

At the moment, she is particularly focused on designers’ ethical practices in encounters with vulnerability and uncertainty. How do we design when we cannot promise improvement, efficiency or clearly “positive user experiences”? How do we work with futures we do not wish for (illness, disability, inequality, loss of control) without reducing them to cases or problems to be solved?

- This is especially important right now, because both design education and welfare systems are under pressure from accelerating technologies, standardisation and demands for measurable impact. In that context, it becomes crucial to insist on design as a practice that can hold doubt, relationships and care. And that we, as designers, are attentive to creating space for humanity where it otherwise risks disappearing, explains Sofie Kinch.

From architect to design researcher
Sofie Kinch’s path to becoming an associate professor at Kolding School of Design has not been linear. She trained as an architect, worked for five years in the textile industry, and for almost ten years has been affiliated with the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University. Her work at Kolding School of Design centres on how playful and aesthetic design processes can create space for participation when words are not enough:

- I often work with user experiences, co-creative design, atmospheres, interior design and CMF, and I am also deeply interested in how digital technologies such as VR and AI can play a more qualified role in design processes. The associate professorship allows me to work more coherently with teaching and research as mutually dependent practices. In teaching, this means I can more actively invite students into ongoing research questions and let teaching function as an experimental space for knowledge production, rather than as the communication of finished knowledge, says Sofie Kinch.

Influence and impact
When asked what she hopes to be able to contribute as an associate professor that she could not before, she answers:

- As an associate professor, I now have a clearer mandate to help set the direction for Kolding School of Design – not only through concrete projects, but in terms of how we understand and practise Play Design as a field. This gives me the opportunity to work more long-term with building research, partnerships and methodological depth, particularly at the intersection of design, play and care. In addition, I hope to contribute more actively to shaping the frameworks that allow us, as designers, to engage with and create new roles within welfare institutions.

- For the students at Kolding School of Design, I hope that my work gives them both the courage and the methods to stay with complexity. That they learn to understand playful design not as something light or superficial, but as a serious and ethical way of exploring the world through the body, the senses and our relationships. And that they leave their education with a sharpened awareness that play design always has consequences, even when intentions are good, and that their responsibility as designers lies precisely in taking this seriously, she concludes.