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An ecological approach to children's playground props

Published: 07 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes an ecological approach to designing children's play props. By studying the world with the help of intermediary objects, children learn about the physical and "mythical" characteristics of their three-dimensional surroundings through physically active play. Starting from the universal pull-along toy as inspiration, a new category of space explorer emerges that interacts with children as they engage their outdoor play environment. Early design experiences are described and directions for future research are given.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    IDC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Interaction design and children
    June 2006
    172 pages
    ISBN:9781450378086
    DOI:10.1145/1139073
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 07 June 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. outdoor play
    2. props for play
    3. theories of play

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2021)A systematic review of physical–digital play technology and developmentally relevant child behaviourInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10032330:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2021
    • (2020)SoundWearProceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3357236.3395541(2201-2213)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2020
    • (2019)Designing for Digital Playing OutProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300909(1-15)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2016)HybridPLAY: A New Technology to Foster Outdoors Physical Activity, Verbal Communication and TeamworkSensors10.3390/s1604058616:4(586)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2016
    • (2016)MarkAirsProceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/2971485.2971517(1-8)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2016
    • (2012)An annotation scheme for social interaction in digital playgroundsProceedings of the 11th international conference on Entertainment Computing10.1007/978-3-642-33542-6_8(85-99)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2012
    • (2010)Collective creation of games using free play technologiesProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/1810543.1810607(335-339)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2010
    • (2010)Design principle of playgrounds’ equipments and spaces for children: An interaction education approachProcedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.2652:2(1968-1971)Online publication date: 2010
    • (2009)A novel approach to interactive playgroundsProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/1551788.1551811(131-139)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2009
    • (2009)Designing for spatial competenceProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/1551788.1551810(123-130)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2009
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