Playful Public Design by Children – The research project culminated in a publication launched on 29 October 2021 at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Public Design is the conception and realization of new things for all in the space with public access to social activities. Children are an important group of public design users but their voices and ideas are seldom considered.

1,023 children (aged 3.5 to 18) participated in the design research project. They applied design thinking to solve problems in the real-life setting of Shing Mun Country Park. Through on-site observation and visual research, children explored the research site with their senses – sight, sound, smell and touch.

They participated as researchers and designers of public facilities and spaces. Children learned critical thinking through participatory design and critique. Inspired by nature and design thinking, children experienced constructive creativity as they participated in public design.

Senior-level students (age 12-18) approached the theme “Playful Public Design” as self-directed projects, while our instructors stepped back to allow more freedom for the youngsters to initiate self-chosen problems and design strategies. They learned to prioritize resources such as time and materials to meet a chosen objective of the country park: conservation, leisure or education.

Student’s creative process consists of three stages:

1) Inquiry – investigating user needs
2) Ideation – generating ideas
3) Improvisation – intuitively connecting materials to visualize ideas

Despite the long creative process, student’s motivation was high, resulting in a variety of ideas such as Wild Boar Feeder, Gazebo for Elderlies and Photo-point at the Paperbark Forest. Instructors changed their role to facilitators, to assist in idea development and technical issues.

A group of the students also participated in the Recycling Bins Design Workshop co-led with the Public Design Lab of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Under the facilitation of Dr. Paul Lo, they had the opportunity to work with the School of Design’s final-year Product Design students to create new prototypes of a recycling bin, in response to a common phenomenon in the country park – boars breaking trash bins and monkeys unlocking recycling bins to eat human-discarded food. The new recycling bin prototypes addressed inclusive user needs and prevention of animals’ access to human food. Students learned to identify problems, ideate possibilities, choose appropriate solutions and build prototypes. They presented their design outcomes to Professor Michael Siu, founder of the Public Design Lab, and representatives from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department of the government.

What our students think about the workshop:

“In the past, I thought a designer just needed to create nice items. Through the workshop I learned that a good designer should make consideration from all users’ perspectives. Our team understood that we should define a core issue among all the problems we examined. Therefore, we mainly wanted to counter the problem where animals started to become dependent on human food from inside the bin, make the job easier for cleaning workers as they would have to hike all the way up onto the hills, and also make it so that the bin can store more rubbish. As a youngster, I was overwhelmed to learn and implement the steps of designing, creating and presenting a product in the university.” – Isaac Wong, age 15, participant

“Before I joined this workshop, I never gave much thought about public design. I never thought about how people design park benches, or other public facilities. Through this three-day experience I learned that to design a rubbish bin you had to think about the many possible users, and how it could fulfil their needs and if it would affect the environment around it. I also learned how something as simple as a rubbish bin could affect the lives of many people, and lives of the wild life!” – Constance Tso, age 14, participant

Across age levels (range from age 3.5 to 18), we noticed a change in children’s thinking, which led to a change in their problem-solving approaches and solutions, as reflected in their artistic creations.

Overall, children’s view point gradually transformed from a human-centric view (solving countryside problems with the comfort and convenience of the city), to an empathetic view in their design ideas (considering the needs from nature, such as trees, animals and insects).

From Passive Learners to Active Explorers and Change-makers

Our art facilitators observed that, with proper guidance and scaffolding, children could learn to research (visually, and with simple text), to identify problems, and suggest solutions for change. The art and design projects were ways for them to make their thinking visible, solution tangible and voices audible.

Our Art Facilitators’ Observations

Many students lacked first-hand experience at the country park. So, much of their creation was based on imagination and visual references from the facilitators. Most of the students still found it hard to breakthrough their self-centeredness at first, but the project introduced different angles of considering problems for the youngsters. – Teacher Bee.

Some students found the project difficult in the beginning. So, I was surprised at the growing level of engagement as the research progressed. Intermediate level (age 8-12) students were happy with their gazebo models, and were willing to learn to organize their ideas and present them. – Teacher Daisy

Most children were keen on the “construction” and “making” part of the learning experience. When the content knowledge was too much, children could become impatient to listen. They just wanted to get into action. – Teacher Cherry

Senior level (age 12-18) students were also more motivated with the construction/making part. Their ideas flowed more freely when they were in a more playful mood. They could construct/make first, and then draw the artistic creation and design outcome later. – Teacher Argus

Where do children find ideas? From imagination or impression?

In the Playful Public Design (PPD) project, children were introduced to brainstorming by sharing aloud and sketching their ideas of a country park. As some of the children did not actually go to the site, they based their ideas mainly on imagination. For those who physically went, they drew from first-hand observation and impression, resulting in rich narratives and content.

The bar chart, with data from our PPD research, shows that more young children (aged 3.5 – 8) sketched according to their imagination, whereas older children (aged 8 – 18) sketched according to impression. Children’s shift of emphasis from imagination to impression could be interpreted as a change from self-centeredness (“me”-point of view) to others-centeredness (“we”-point of view) as their experience with the world grow. As children develop their thinking, imagination could be the bridge from what they “think” to what they “see”, and from fantasy to reality.

As human, we are usually affected by subjective and objective factors in the formation of thoughts and opinions, which can create blind spots in our judgments. So, to children, the task of designing a country park for the general public, undoubtedly sounds like a search for a needle in a haystack.

To be enlightened like a designer, we can actually start with observing and reflecting. This is in fact the first step in a design process. Before diving into country park design, how should children observe, and evoke feelings?

In preparation for the Playful Public Design (PPD) project, we invited PolyU School of Design Public Design Lab’s Associate Lab Leader, Dr. Paul Lo, and then Research Fellow, Dr. Elaine Wong, to conduct staff training sessions on research methods in February and March 2019.

There are three levels of observation and feeling techniques – seeing, sensing and feeling.

1. “Seeing” – Activate one’s full senses to notice specific elements, such as listening to the wind, touching stones, etc.
2. “Sensing” – Then form connections between these elements/activities/objects/users, and the environment, such as children/wind/flying kites – This is a group of multiple elements.
3. “Feeling” – Using empathy / putting oneself in someone’s shoes – reflect on the relationships among different groups of elements, and evaluate whether they are actually useful for the users, or need to be improved. For example, when children and elderlies use the same public facility, is the space inclusive or not?

Sensations and feelings may sound like abstract ideas to children or adults, yet senses allow us to feel, and feelings allow us to come up with good designs. This learning experience has expanded our horizons and opened our minds for what’s to come.

Our team visited Shing Mun Country Park