Rémi Leclerc

While designers have applied play to their own ends, few play scholars have focused on the cultural relevance of this relationship. To ascertain how, if at all, the latter examined the relationship between play and design, I reviewed original manuscripts available at The Strong National Museum of Play's Brian Sutton-Smith's Library and Archives of Play. Compensating for the lack of research available linking play to design, research focused on references around play, discussing its multifarious nature, including imagination, creativity, storytelling, art, strategy, or social engagement, to connect play to design through their multidisciplinary manifestations. Building on research reflecting on a personal shift from design for play to play for design, the paper identifies various thematic bridges linking playmaking and design to help consolidate a conceptual framework promoting designerly ways of knowing informed by play. An inspirational form of design for play, proposed as a superlative form of design, could be useful as a transdisciplinary Design Play relevant to addressing contemporary challenges.

Designing requires the simultaneous application of diverse modes of thinking and making; the administration of a set of competences, among them creativity, ranked most important by Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design faculty members. An introductory design thinking subject offered by the School uses Play as a means to foster best design learning experiences. It leverages Play's integrative cultural agency to facilitate students' acquisition of creative and instrumental thinking skills. From the formulation of a hypothesis and identification of a context, to subsequent iterative development and testing of a design proposition, the acquisition of fundamental creative design thinking skills are facilitated by play and demonstrated over the course of a project. A survey questionnaire (N=219) and subsequent factor analysis revealed positive student feedback. This chapter describes how the subject was implemented, and suggests how this blend of international cultural influences informing design education could serve China's creativity and innovation industries.

This paper relates how a design research laboratory’s focus on design for play has shifted over the years, and how, informed by experimentation carried out in teaching, research, and consultancy, it has expanded its scope to make apparent the broader relationships existing between play, design, and education. For if one could contend that design shapes culture, and consider Huizinga’s contention that culture is the outcome of play; then one could easily be brought to appreciate the multiple links imaginable between play and design. For instance, taking cues from research in design for play, the paper will suggest how toy design practices may inform design practices at large, or for that matter how play informs design, through an account of its approach - or purposeful lack thereof. This paper hopes to assist designers seeking to enrich awareness of the cultural relevance of their practice through the lens of play; and play academics working to expand their perspective on play’s cultural agency by conceptually bridging their field to that of design. To illustrate its premise this paper presents a curatory account of a body of work produced since the facility was set up, which has been collated into an interactive online archive, polyplay.hk.

This paper charts creative development and real-life implementation of the 1% Water Workshop (1%WW) project, an innovative educational toolkit designed by a Hong Kong (HK) student-professor design team. The project addresses concerns about water sustainability by leveraging Research through Design as a construct for sustainable practices. Design is intertwined with experiential learning, play, poetry, and humour so as to enrich pedagogy and nurture sensitization to " pro-environmental consciousness " , a focus of research carried out at a university design research laboratory. This paper also relates the project's subsequent development from school to start up so as to ascertain potential for novel approaches to environmental education design.

Hong Kong (HK) is widely perceived as the world's toy capital. In the past decade, its toy industry has outgrown its role as the world's provider of cheap and flexible toys known under the label of 'Made in Hong Kong' to become a global generator of play products. This brings the industry opportunities, but also challenges it to maintain its competitive edge. In this context, while HK designers are keen to demonstrate their creative potential, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), School of Design's (SD), Toy Design Lab (the Lab) undertakes education, research and development programmes, helping foster a culture of creativity that embraces innovation, design and engineering. Among other projects it carries out 'Hackshops', where participants hack toys and use found materials to build working playthings to nurture creative toy design processes. This paper relates the Lab's best toy design practice knowledge accrued organising, supervising and assessing Hackshop experiments since 2006.

Why do we produce licensed toys? What compels children and adults alike to desire such objects? What makes them such greatly sought after artifacts by collectors? Products of the 20th century, licensed, or character toys, are offspring of the toy and media industries. Surfing the post-war consumer wave generated by the Baby Boom, the toy industry was eager to transform the war effort's technological know-how to explore new global market options. Mass-mediated pop-culture characters were seen as a boon for marketers keen on tapping into a wider mental share of consumers; emotions and fantasies to fuel innovation and fend off internationalized competition. Designs and play patterns generated by the reification of a popular myth derive from an original narrative; they are the interface to a world of motivations and values. Character toys mediate play, and as such combine play with story telling, inviting players to identify to role models, adapt adventures to their social needs...

Hong Kong is widely perceived as the world's toy capital. In the past decade, its toy industry has outgrown its role as the world's flexible provider of cheap toys known under the label of 'Made in Hong Kong' to become a global generator of play products. In this context, the School of Design's Toy Design Lab of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University undertakes education, research and development programmes, helping to foster a culture of creativity that embraces innovation, design and engineering, initiating research and product development programmes with academic, industry, and institutional partners, to design innovative playthings for local and international children markets. Aware of changing global market realities, the Lab is concerned with studying the future of the materiality of play from a critical perspective. This paper relates educational research and development experiences in academia and industry carried out by the Lab over the past 5 years, and its relevance to toy design business in the South China region.

Through learning by doing, School of Design (SD) students at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) acquire the skills necessary for defining such foundational project components as a design brief, or planning and managing a design process.