Enabling family connections through fluid play

Abstract

Smartphones and digital devices are ingrained within modern family life. While they provide many benefits they also create a social gap between parents and children. Interests of parents and children often do not align, as parents tend to prefer physical activities, showing a reluctance towards the prefered digital play of children (Hoika, E., Wu, Z., Alexander, J.J., & Thomsen, B.S., 2018). This creates a barrier in shared digital play. It would be valuable to break this barrier, as adults and children are more likely to be happy in general and feel more connected with their family members when they spend more time playing together (Ginsburg, K. 2007). In order to achieve this goal, a promising area to explore is the type of play that involves the interest of both parents and children. By combining tangible and digital elements a type of fluid play can arise, capable of breaking the digital barrier, resulting in family connection.UNGA is a loyalty campaign specialist which has shown interests in creating this type of play. Dutch loyalty campaigns, often targeted towards families and children, provide a context in which this fluid play will be explored, offering a platform to reach thousands of families. This leads to the project assignment of designing a fluid interaction with a smartphone to engage families in play, within the context of a loyalty campaign. Various design methods and tools are applied within this thesis, mainly following the research through design principles and exploring the possibilities of animation as a design tool. After exploring UNGA as a company to define its context, insights on family connections from the perspective of Dutch families are gathered. Furthermore the context of fluid play is explored by hands-on experimentation and desk research. By analyzing the results, a design focus is created, with the following design statement: fluid family play should encourage “poking fun” at each other, where parents and children are equally involved in a personal & physical activity.Subsequently, concepts are developed through multiple rounds of experiential prototypes, involving internal and external stakeholders in the process.“FliereFluiters” is introduced as the designed fluid play experience. By carefully utilizing tangible and digital elements in one fluid play experience, FliereFluiters compels to both children and adults, breaking the digital wall amongst family members. By combining a personal, physical and humorous activity within this experience, FliereFluiters manages to enable family connections, one surprise at a time. A loyalty model is proposed in which the concept reaches families through multiple channels. Supermarket interaction and social media aspects are proposed as means to introduce the concept to consumers, while the involvement with the concept takes place primarily at home.The design proposal is validated through the involvement of families and experts from different backgrounds. To fully validate the long term family impact of the concept however, a long term study involving the participation of Dutch families with a fully operational prototype is recommended.