Colloquia

Summary

The majority of children in the Netherlands do not meet the recommended time for outdoor play of 2 hours, and 15% of children never even play outside. Of these children, the majority live in highly urbanized areas. Playing outside is vital for children's development, as it increases their health, confidence, intellectual development, social development, and happiness. Therefore, research has been conducted and a design was created to motivate children in Dutch cities to play outside. 

This design focuses on changing children’s behaviour. The reason for people’s behaviours are often based on their values and the values of people who have a big influence on them. Therefore, this thesis focuses on values as a base for behaviour change, by incorporating values in the design process. A framework was created through a research-through-design process, using Value Sensitive Design, the Social Implication Design method, Ecological Model of Health Behaviour and co-design sessions.

The process focuses on three main parts. In the first part, the important stakeholders are identified. These are the children and their parents. Secondly, a value was chosen that served as a focus point. For this thesis, the focus point was neighbourhood social cohesion. By improving neighbourhood social cohesion, it will be easier for children to get to know other children in the neighbourhood to play outside with. Also, there will be an increased perceived safety for the parents, as they know other parents in the neighbourhood will look out for their children. The last part of the process is to use this value to create a design proposal that motivates children to play outside. The design proposal is the SpeelCom, a kind of intercom that connects children in a neighbourhood. It can, for example, be placed under the standard intercom system in an apartment complex. Using the SpeelCom, children can easily get into contact with other children in the neighbourhood to arrange impromptu play dates.