JUST PLAY PROJECT
A DESIGN GUIDELINE & EVALUATION TOOLKIT FOR CHILD-DIRECTED PLAY ENVIRONMENTS
As a part of the DEA5700 course Age-Friendly Environments, my team worked with community partner Just Play Project (JPP), an organization that aims to provide free child-directed play opportunities for children in Ithaca, NY. We developed a set of design guidelines specifically focused on supporting afterschool play programs in Wood Street Park, the location of JPP, and created an organizational tool that provides a step-by-step process to assist afterschool program managers that would like to create a similar set of design guidelines for other parks in Ithaca.
timeline: march - may 2021
site: wood street park, ithaca, ny
role: team lead, community partner liason
partners: julia kan, evan rossi
programs: adobe indesign, adobe illustrator, google suite
prompt to work with and for a Community Partner on one of the designated community-engaged projects to identify and define an environmental research, design and/or policy project related to age-friendly environments. My team worked with Just Play Project to conduct an environmental assessment and develop design recommendations to support intergenerational play and recreation at Wood St Park, the current location of the Just Play Project afterschool play program.
The focus of this project included 3 key objectives:
To understand and examine the barriers to access afterschool programs at Wood Street Park and the environmental attributes that support or hinder child-directed play.
To understand and analyze the needs of children and community members* to support afterschool programs at Wood Street Park through empirical and participatory research.
To understand and propose design guidelines through environmental interventions that successfully support child-directed play programs in Ithaca, NY.
*Community members in this context include, but are not limited to, afterschool program leaders, play workers, and program guests.