Discovering Play

What is play? When you think about the word play, an image of children frolicking in an open grassy area probably comes to mind. In reality though, play is a really complex issue that takes a lot of different forms for a lot of different people. After doing a little research about the idea of play, I discovered that there are around 16 different categorizations that cover everything from role play to rough & tumble play. In my sketchbook I started to generate a list of different kinds of play objects and activities.

To categorize and rationalize the many ways play can occur, I created 8 umbrella categories that covered the breadth of objects and activities involved with the different play types. Within each play type, I identified relevant categories and specific examples to help to better understand the relationships between types of play.  

(Hover your mouse over the different types of play to learn more!)

To present my findings, I created an interactive presentation that makes it simple to reference the kind of play against its umbrella categories and specific examples. My goal was to make it easy to quickly access the information but also allow the user to asses the relationships between different play types.