Blueberry Project

Inclusive Play Equipment

2022 / Play Equipment

The Project

The Brief: Design two sets of inclusive play equipment, one that can be used by a single person and another that can be used by two or more people at once. This project was completed in collaboration with Blueberry, a local play equipment design and manufacturing company.

My main role in this project involved analysing pre-existing products and completing target market research. As part of this, we contacted people involved with Primary school education to gain an understanding of what needs are not being met by existing equipment. We asked the following questions:

Do you feel there is any current gap in play equipment for SEN children?

What tends to be preferential for children in parks etc?

Are there any common sensory challenges for SEN children with play equipment?

Do you find that children use play equipment as intended or interact in their own way?

If the solution required interaction from adults, could this be easily facilitated?

Based on the responses to these questions we decided to focus on incorporating sensory experiences into play. Existing product research however showed that the sensory board market is already well provided for, so we decided to change our approach: How can we design a system to allow these pre-existing sensory boards to be installed in a more interactive way?

Our proposal was a series of identical frames that can be used to make a series of different structures, all of which are designed to be:

• Wheelchair accessible

• Configurable to clients requirements

• Transportable- flat pack in design

• Customisable inserts

• In line with school budgets- can be purchased one frame at a time. The modular nature means more sections can be added on later and the product is still usable even if you only have one board.

If we were to continue with this I think it could be a great project to get children directly involved in the design process.