Century of the Play
Posted on November 15, 2012 | posted by:
“How many kids do you want to have in the future?” I was talking to a friend one day. “Two or three maybe, and definitely one boy at least,” He answered with a smile, “so that I can play baseball and all the games with him.” Admit it or not, sometimes we are still attracted by toys and games even though we are technically mature grown-ups.
Play makes people to do things with willingness. I’ve heard from many friends that they want to work for Google just because of the awesome, playful office. Yes, people work for money, for ambitions, for goal of life, etc., but at the end of the day, work is one major part of experiencing life. People are more willing to work for a fun experience, instead of a stressful job with pressure from upper level organizers.
It does not matter what we do for life, how old we are or which part of the world we come from, play is in our human gene. Our brain is structured in a way to play games. For example, the famous “I heart NY” logo is a simple, but well manipulated game. The heart is a shape that allows people to translate it into “love”; “NY” is an abbreviation, which also invites the viewer to read it as New York in mind. Those little twists in our mind when we view this design stimulate our “play nerves” so that it becomes a popular visual design.
Couple of weeks ago I visited MoMA when the “Century of the Child” exhibition was taking place.(http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/centuryofthechild/) Outside the gallery, there’s a set of giant dining table and chairs that make adults who sit on them immediately look like children in size. I stood there for a while, watching people come and climb up those chairs to sit and to take pictures. It was one of the magic moments when you saw everyone smiling as pure as children, simply because of a playful big chair.
“Play will be to the 21st Century what work was to the industrial age–our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value.” The quote from Pat Kane in his book “The Play Ethic” (2004) is printed on the gallery wall. Play is the one of the major motivations of various human activities and our creative innovations. I think a successful design project should have some kind of playful ingredient inside. Whether it is a fun user experience design, an interesting takeaway design, or an engaging system design, a big purpose of design is to inspire the audience to enjoy themselves with it and to create “design” with their background.
A few years ago, I had a talk with father about “play”. One thing I still remember from it was that he said for decades, people in China seemed to have lost the ability to really enjoy life. There were certainly many political, economical and historical reasons for that. But more importantly, maybe there’s a lack of page called “play” in our culture. Why don’t we laugh in public places as loud as we can? Why don’t we dance in front of people just for fun? Why don’t we smile to strangers down the street to make someone’s day? If play is the origin of innovation, we can never make any progress without it in our future.