Serious Play Conference 2008
‘Serious Play’ is the title of the conference I recently attended in Pasadena, California. Is the title a paradox or does it actually make sense? To me it makes perfectly sense – that is, if serious equals values like: meaningful, absorbing and valuable.
After having interviewed his kids, John Hockenberry put it like this: “Play is so fun, that it’s serious!” In my ‘post-conference’ state of mind I will add to this: since being essential to our ability to learn, create and innovate, play is serious matter!
Consequently, I will claim that play is a seriously important part of the design process. Without knowing how to play, we will lack a crucial tool for creativity and for creating anything new and truly remarkable. To create new innovative and creatively splendid ideas, products or designs you may as well take playfulness quite serious!
During the conference ‘Serious Play’ was addressed from many different angles - from speakers of different professions to performers and musicians, during the workshops and as the theme for the evening parties.
Artist and Pentagram partner, Paula Scher took her outset in the distinction between the serious and the solemn. She emphasized the importance of changing focus before the serious, imperfect and explorative gets stuck in popularity and moves into the comfortable and all to perfect zone of ‘solemn’. Paula Scher further argued how you need to go places that you don’t know, where you can be a fool and where you can PLAY! Because this is where you learn and grow.
Role-play and prototyping
Among the featured speakers were also Tim Brown, President and CEO at IDEO, John Maeda, President-elect at Rhode Island School of Design and Charles Elachi Director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all of them integrating elements of play as an essential part of their professional careers.
In his presentation Tim Brown focused on tree aspects of the design process: exploration, building and role-play. All tree being an essential part of children’s games and their way of learning through play. He emphasized that in order to explore and be playful you need to feel trust. If not, you are not likely to take creative risks. Tim Brown emphasized the counter action between playfulness and seriousness and argued that play needs to have rules in order to be constructive – especially when playing in groups.
Tim Brown showed examples of how they have integrated these elements of play in the design processes at IDEO, providing the team with tools for generating and sharing ideas, for grasping form and functionality through building and prototyping and gaining insights and empathy through role-play.
John Maeda once again inspired through his engaging playful and experimenting approach and his ability to keep an open, creative mind. His design and art installations sparkes your curiosity and make you see things from a different angle - often adding a smile on your face. An example is his human computer installation, which showed how prototyping and role-play helped his students grasp the complexity of the computer. Finally he shared with the audience his concerns about how to fit unrestricted creativity into the academic world.
Charles Elachi gave a great example of how to keep a playful attitude in a complex context. Having worked as a principal investigator on a number of research and development studies and flight projects sponsored by NASA, Charles Elachi knows the value of innovative thinking, passion and imagination, - and seing some of the solutions for launching a satellite into space and make it land safely on a foreign planet, - you can tell that experimentation and creative thinking has been put into play!
Celebrating uniqueness and curiosity
(Photo © Matthew Barney; Gladstone Gallery)
Athlete and artist, Aimee Mullins, has a different motivation for being innovative and playful in order to affect her world. Aimee Mullins had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was one year old. Being determined to live through her successes, Aimee Mullins shows how she used her obvious difference as a potential to opening up possibilities rather than constraining them. Wearing amputees she has learned to explore the fun of changing her personality – and her physical appearance.
Aimee Mullins has realized how we in childhood learn that differences are bad. Instead she encourages us to consider diversity as a quality that make us aware of our uniqueness and makes it enriching to collaborate. She asks us to see our potential and go for wild and improbable goals and to constantly practice our curiosity, - since curiosity makes us see possibilities and allow us to take risks.
Both Aimee Mullins, Tim Brown, John Maida and Charles Elaschi thus seem to agree with Paula Scher on avoiding the solemn.
The conference was great. Now go play, …seriously!