Projects
Focused on
Cities & public space
Experience design
Connect & collab
Short info
Category
Concept, prototype
Team
Isa Moorman
Hannah van Rixtel
Vasil Nikolov
Coaches
Manon Barendse
Jun Hu
Course
Project 1 Design
Squad
Smart and the City
Period
02-20 - 06-20
Digital Playgrounds
Description
Why
Playgrounds are very important for child development and as meeting spaces in neighborhoods. However, playgrounds have lacked considerable innovation in comparison to all the new play features provided by our personal devices. What if could make playgrounds more adaptive and interactive using technology? What if we could make our personal devices an integral part of the playground experience?
What
The concept is as follows. Every playground instrument has the technology to collect kinetic energy and to produce light (using translucent hard plastics and LED lighting). Every instrument is connected to a big battery placed on the playground. The collective goal is to charge the battery. When it is filled up, a message is displayed on a screen and sent out via an app, announcing that a light show will start that evening at 19.00.
What is great is that people from other neighborhoods can see the information of each playground. This possibly invites people over who would otherwise never go there, building unique interactions between people. It can also lead to collaboration or friendly competition.
Results
The project was well received by our coaches. Shortly after the project was finished, proposals were made by a couple of different companies to pick up the project. The did not lead to anything, unfortunately.
Learning points
Digital Playgrounds was the first true design project that I did with peer design students, which brought whole new dynamics. Firstly, because there were still big differences in how well everyone had developed their expertise areas, there were many moments of learning from each other.
It was also in this project that I dared to pick up a leading role within the team, thus learning how to listen to what everyone is saying, highlighting what decisions need to be taken, and planning out future steps.
I learned how important it is for a team to have a common vision. All of us had complementary strengths, but we were divided in our idea of what the project should be. This caused a lot of effort by having unproductive discussions rather than taking steps forward. However, one could argue that it was this effort that brought out the quality of the project.