Felt Playful
Reimagining liminal spaces with playful interventions that prompt joyful interactions with commuters.
The project
This project reimagines liminal spaces with playful interventions that invite commuters to interact. It disrupts the usual journey, as a comment on how our surroundings are designed to dictate how we use the city.
“Incorporating play into our public spaces through design is the best way to make play accessible to everyone.”
Colin MacDonald, 2018
It started with a question: why are spaces built for ease and accessibility so often boring, when what we want is to enjoy life? I wanted to remind commuters that norms can be broken, and that there’s more than one way to use a space.
Liminal spaces
By liminal spaces I mean the moments we spend in our heads while travelling from A to B: empty time to process our lives or our surroundings. Inspired by Studio Ghibli’s scene of Chihiro on the train in Spirited Away, I chose the Underground as the setting.
Play as a strategy
Colourful felted characters on the handrails challenge how the Underground is normally used. Play matters in my practice because it’s a language everyone speaks. In Sturrock et al.’s play cycle (Smartkidz, 2022), this is the play cue: the moment an invitation to play is made.
Emotional design
I designed the characters with emotional design in mind (Norman, 2005), which has three levels: visceral, behavioural and reflective. I focused on the behavioural level: how intuitive and satisfying the interaction feels, which shapes how much people reflect on it afterwards.
