Through interactive play artifacts, this thesis explores how children can engage with nature beyond observation—amplifying curiosity, sensory perception, and relational negotiation to foster deeper more-than-human encounters.

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Relational Playgrounds

-Ongoing Project

I will be working on this topic and presenting my work at UID Talks on June 4th, marking the completion of my masters degree in Interaction Design!

Project Information

Interaction Design Degree Project 2025 Umeå Institute of Design

Role

Individual Project

Internal Mentors

Christoffel Kuenen, Ambra Trotto

External Mentors

Pamela Gill-Salas, Karey Helms, Luca Bottoni

Age Group: 5-7 years

Capturing the shift from early sensory exploration (tactile curiosity) to more structured meaning-making (negotiation, perspective-taking).

Observing Children

→ Ethnographic & Situated Enquiry

Secondary Study

→ Critical Literature Review

Speculative Enactments

→ Embodied Speculation

Play-shop

→ Participatory Design

Research Phase

I conducted ethnographic research across different play environments—unstructured nature play, domestic pet interactions, and structured zoo visits—to examine how children perceive and relate to non-humans. Key insights from this phase revealed that:

  • Material engagement fosters multispecies care—children interact through touch, movement, and improvisation.

  • Mimicry and sensory disruptions shape how they experience non-human perspectives.

  • Play is an active site for attunement rather than just explanation or instruction.

Concept and Prototyping

Building on these insights, I am developing interactive play interventions that invite children to engage with non-humans in new ways, shifting from teaching care to designing for attunement, uncertainty, and exploration.


Over the next few weeks, I will refine these concepts through iterative prototyping and playtesting. My focus remains on creating interaction design interventions that reframe how we notice, respond to, and relate to the more-than-human world through play.

Next Steps

In this exploration, I use Arduino-driven interactions to introduce unpredictability, mimicking the spontaneous and dynamic nature of non-human behavior. By embedding unexpected responses into the system, children experience moments of noticing, attuning, and reacting, shifting from control-based interaction to one of negotiation and discovery.


One key observation from these prototypes was how children adjust their behavior in response to emergent, unexpected effects—mirroring real-world multispecies encounters where interactions are shaped by uncertainty rather than fixed rules.


This work continues my investigation into interaction design as a means of fostering attunement, play, and relationality across species boundaries.