Designing for playfulness: A heuristic exploration of playfulness and playground design

Playfulness is an experience that emerges from the phenomenon of play. Contemporary play-design research focuses on children and is limited to a construct of play that emphasizes physical activity and physical literacy. This has resulted in play doctrine that perpetuates neoliberal ideals of productivity and idealized body types. This thesis explores playfulness in the play-design process through semi-structured interview with key-informant researchers, designers, planners, facilitators and regulators in the field of play-design, and provides creative considerations to aid designers in the development of more inclusive and playful spaces.