Introducing play in design higher education : a South African case study

Abstract

From a design education lens, this study aims to understand how play could be included as part of the student design process. Hence, the study is situated at the intersection of three key areas, namely play, design higher education, and the student design process. Although the concept of playful learning has been widely explored in early learning, there is a dearth of research with regard to how play could be integrated in the domain of design higher education. Accordingly, this study stems from a curriculum-based project facilitated in the BA Information Design programme at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. Making use of a collective case study methodology, and featuring two years of student projects (from 2019 and 2020) as cases, the study sets out to understand how play influenced students’ design process. A case-based approach was feasible because of the rich data collected from the cases; the empirical evidence analysed in this study included student process documentations, reflection questionnaires, and final student projects. Each cohort of projects was analysed individually by means of a qualitative content analysis, resulting in a discussion of themes emerging from each case, as well as a summary of the students’ design processes. Subsequently, the two cases were compared and analysed in a cross-case synthesis which consolidated themes emerging from the data, and presented a critical integration with the theoretical framework of the study. The cross-case synthesis resulted in a visualisation of themes from the empirical evidence, presented as a proposal for a play-fuelled pedagogy of design, which affords students the opportunity to relieve stress, build momentum, learn about themselves, challenge their assumptions, enable empathy, and remember to play. Closely aligned with the values of design for good and human-centred design philosophies, such a play-fuelled pedagogy of design could be extended to other domains of higher education.