Essential concepts in toy design education: aimlessness, empathy and play value

The paper aims at contributing to the professional development of toy design education programs. It draws from the practice of a children’s toy design course at Delft University of Technology. It identifies three major concepts that greatly influence toy quality and that students find difficult to understand and apply: aimlessness, empathy and play value. The paper describes how these concepts are attended to in the educational format of the toy design course. Aimlessness is a central element of play: the player is motivated for the activity by an interest in the process, not by a desire for a certain lasting outcome. This distinguishes toys from other products and toy design from general design. Students tend to look for ́problems ́ to be solved by using a toy rather than offering possibilities for interesting play processes. Within the Delft course, students are requested to discern between children’s own objectives in play and those of parents and themselves as designers. Some creativity techniques are used that do not focus on finding solutions for problems but on exploring the solution space around ideas. Empathy with children and their needs, wishes, preferences and skills does not come from books alone, neither does looking back at one’s own youth provide a solid vision on play quality. Some tools and techniques for stimulating empathy with children are used in the course. The more obvious one is direct contact with children throughout the design process. Some other sources that enrich empathy are also discussed. Play value is a term used to describe the overall enjoyment of a child with a certain toy. It consists of a complex of factors such as complexity and challenge, appropriateness for the context, correspondence to the character of the child. It is very difficult to predict children’s use of toys, but detailed assessment of the various factors contributing to play value does give indications of qualities and weaknesses in the design of the toy. The paper also identifies a gap in the course where it concerns the exploration of children ́s worlds of experience prior to the choice of a product domain and suggests development of techniques for such exploration, e.g. contextmapping techniques.