Critical Justification 1

CJ 1

Gender Roles in Toy Design DE1082

Toni Pilling

Contents Wordpress Blog 4-5

Exploration Project 7-19

Initial Statement of Research Brief

8-9

Research Plan 10-11 Science Research 12-13 Field Research 14-15 Marketing/Advertising Research 16-17 Mini Briefs 18-19

Major Project 21-87

Initial Statement of Design Brief

22-23

Plan for Final Major Project

24-25

Initial Correspondence 26-29

Flipping Girls Toys to Suit Boys

30-31

Early Project Tutor Meeting

32-33

Board Game Designing 34-57

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How to Design a Board Game?

34-35

Re-designing Existing Board Games

36-43

Development of My Own Ideas

44-47

Making my Game Addictive

48-57

Minor Interim 58-59

Skype meeting with Mat Kipling 60-61 Board game Designing Cont. 62-85 Creating a ‘My First’ Version 62-63 Hasbro Correspondence 64-65 What Makes a Game Fun? 66-67

Brainstorming with my Peer Group

68-69

Decision Making 70-73 Trait Game Iterations 74-81 Focus Group with Peers 82-82 Hasbro Correspondence 2 84-85 New Statement of Design Brief 86-87

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Wordpress blog Throughout both my Exploration and Final Major project I updated my design blog on Wordpress on a regular basis.

“My blog helps me keep on track as I know I want to add new posts every few days. It also really helps to get my thoughts out at the time of completing a task whilst they are fresh in my mind and has assisted with me writing up my Exploration and CJ. By also documenting all my work when I have sent emails to collaborators/validators I can easily send them a link to the relevant posts.�

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Exploration Project How can toy design reduce the gender divide?

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Initial Statement of Research Brief Outline written up to explain what the problem was that the Exploration Project was going to tackle, who it was going to be for, what questions were going to be answered and what the end goal of the project was.

“By outlining my goals it helped keep me on track and not go off on a tangent during my project.�

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Research Plan “By splitting up my research into 4 clear directions it helped me visualise what I wanted to achieve for the end of Exploration Project. I did not work in a completely linear way as lined out but more or less did it in the order of the 4 sections. The 3 weeks I left for idea generation also ended up as about 1 and a half weeks as my research took longer than expected.�

Science Behind Gender Nature/nurture debate Play in early childhood Gender debate

Field Research Toys and connections with future life choices Testing toys with children Parents opinions

Marketing/Advertising Research Advertising affecting toy choice Toy store layout affecting toy choice Existing campaigns

Idea Generation Different directions for Final Major Project

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Week 7/11/16

14/11/16

21/11/16

28/11/16

5/12/16

12/12/16

19/12/16

26/12/16

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Science Research Secondary research Done to find out whether children choose toys because of their environment or if it is natural instinct and the importance of play in early childhood.

Interview with Dr Nick Neave Confirm findings from the initial secondary research.

Are gender stereotypes good or bad?

Research into the gender debate.

“This research was pretty extensive and involved a lot of reading around. It was helpful to get insights from an expert and created a good basis of knowledge for my project.”

Conclusions from science research • Nature and nurture both have an influence on toy preference • The nature vs nurture debate will never be fully solved • Play helps with a child’s development

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Field Research Careers/toy connections survey To find out whether what adults play with as children affected their future choices in life.

Focus group Conducted on 8 children aged 3-4, 4 girls and 4 boys to find out their opinions on certain toys dependent on their function or form.

Parents opinions survey Finding out what parents thought about gender stereotypes.

“The field research was really important to my project, I found out a lot about children’s preferences for different gender type toys. The 2 surveys I carried out gave me some useful insights too.”

Conclusions from field research • • • •

The outward appearance of a toy affects a child’s choice more than the form of the toy The toys we play with as children could have an impact on our future career choices/interests Girls are positively discriminated, it seems to be popular opinion that boys, in general, cannot play with girls toys Children are usually encouraged to play with their gender stereotypical toys

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Marketing/Advertising Research Advertising research Analysing key words in 30 adverts to see whether this affects what toys children perceive as ‘for girls’ or ‘for boys.’

Toy store research Looking at 2 toy store layouts to see whether this affect children’s choices of certain toys.

Existing campaigns What companies are tackling gender issues in toy design.

“The marketing/advertising research was helpful to see how the way something is perceived in the media could be affecting a child’s preference to certain toys.”

Conclusions from marketing/advertising research • Toy advertising plays a major part on influencing children to buy certain toys • Girls are seen to be okay to play with ‘boys’ toys but boys are seen to not be able to play with ‘girls’ toys • Toy store layouts are not an issue with gender stereotypes, this area has already been addressed

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Mini Briefs 6 briefs were created in order of how controversial each topic is • • • • • •

Gender stereotypes in marketing Changing parents mindset Encouraging androgyny Encouraging females into masculine roles Encouraging males into feminine roles Encouraging gender stereotypical roles

“These briefs were created to help split my topic up as I knew that there were different routes I could take from my insights in Exploration. After I completed each of my mini briefs it really helped me see a clear direction that I wanted to take for my Final Major Project and write off directions which would not be suitable.”

Conclusions from mini briefs • Combine changing parents mindsets and marketing with another brief as these aren’t substantial enough on their own • Encouraging males into feminine roles is difficult but the route I am passionate about • Encouraging androgyny can be the back up route if I am struggling

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Major Project How can toy design encourage males into more stereotypical female roles?

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Initial Statement of Design Brief Outline written up to explain what the problem is, who it is going to be for, why this needs to change and what the end goal is for Final Major Project.

“Outlining my exploration helped me stay on track so by outlining my Final Major Project this should again help me stay in the right direction and not go off on a tangent or forget what my intentions were in the first place.�

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Plan for Final Major Project 16/1/17

23/1/17

30/1/17

6/2/17

13/2/17

20/2/17

Research Correspondence with collaborators and validators Testing with children and parents

Idea generation Initial ideas Idea iteration and development

Model making/ prototyping Creating a prototype Creating packaging

Finishing/ presentation Finish off models Photograph models Make presentation boards/ material

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“Similar to my Exploration Project I have split my Final Major Project up into 4 sections to try and stick to, this time slightly less linear as I know there will be times that I come back for research during testing and getting validation.�

27/2/17

6/3/17

13/3/17

20/3/17

27/3/17

3/4/17

10/4/17

17/4/17

24/4/17

1/5/17

8/5/17

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Initial Lego Correspondence An email was sent out explaining what my Exploration and direction for Final Major was to James Stephenson and Mat Kipling who both work at Lego as toy designers.

“The reason behind contacting James and Mat was because at the end of my Exploration project my main feedback was that it would have been good to get some validation off toy designers. Both James and Mat seemed really enthusiastic about talking through my ideas so in a few weeks I will be contacting them both again to discuss potential concepts.�

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Initial Let Toys be Toys Correspondence Leading on from the previous correspondence an email was sent to Let Toys be Toys.

“As my topic for Final Major could be quite controversial to some people I thought Let Toys be Toys would be perfect to get some feedback from as they work in this area everyday. They were really helpful but suggested that I make a toy/game for both boys and girls as just targeting boys means I am gender stereotyping. They also want me to write up a guest blog post about my Exploration Project which is amazing and will help promote my work.�

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Flipping Girls Toys to Suit Boys Existing toys that are marketed specifically at girls were looked at. These were then flipped to be more appropriate for a male market.

“When I first started my project I wanted to design toys to tackle my topic, however I struggled to come up with any substantial ideas from this task that I would want to take on with my Final Major. This made me worry that I was not going to be able to come up with decent ideas and I got stuck in a bit of a rut at this point.�

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Early Project Tutor Meeting This project meeting happened early on in Final Major and was a turning point for the project.

“After discussing my current ideas with Mark he could see that I was struggling. It was suggested that I look into another direction other than toys and possibly design a board game instead. This meeting made me feel slightly more confident that I could come up with a substantial idea for my topic.�

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How to Design a Board Game?

In order to begin thinking about board game design I read articles online about board game design and collected notes from this to take forward.

“This research was very helpful as I have never done any game design before. I took the advice I read about re-designing current board games as my next step.�

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Re-designing Board Games 7 board games were re-designed by taking out and adding in minor and major elements. The ones that were useful to the project have been explained on the next few pages.

“This helped me to come up with initial ideas that were really substantial and I could see being taken forward for my project.�

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Monopoly Re-design Changing Monopoly from the ‘richest player’ to the ‘proudest parent’ in the hope that it would encourage children to be a stay at home parent when they are older.

“When I first looked at Monopoly I thought it was going to be impossible to re-design as it has so many elements. However, this idea has some substance. If I was to continue with this idea I think it would help my main objective for Final Major of getting more males into nurturing/stereotypical feminine roles. The adopting children game may be a bit ‘silly’ but I can actually imagine people playing it and I think it would put a fun twist on being a parent.”

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The Game of Life Re-design Changing the elements of salary and house cards to personalities and adding situations which would mean being different genders, personalities or jobs would have a benefit or hindrance through life.

“This game has started to make me really think about how I could incorporate traits and personalities to get to a goal. The way it would show how every child is unique is a real benefit and something that I think would work really well in teaching children that being well rounded or having traits that are stereotypically male/female is a good thing, no matter what your gender.�

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The Mad Game Re-design An element was added where you create your character based on gender, job, height and favourite colour so different paths could be taken in the game dependent on who you are.

“When creating the second part of this game (building a character), I thought this would be a really fun game. It’s completely random which means no judgement is passed and helps promote opposite gender stereotypes, e.g. ‘nurse’ and ‘male’ is a positive attribute to have. The game could have all sorts of combinations and is one I plan to develop.”

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My Concept - Proud Parent Game First prototype was inspired by the Monopoly re-design and is all based around becoming a ‘proud parent.’

“After playing the game (against myself) I realised that the game-play was too short. The game finished after about 10 minutes, this was due to having 2 dice and the fact that you don’t keep going around the board. It is more of a race to the finish game. I liked the concept of this game with becoming a ‘proud parent’ as it fits well with my aim to encourage males into more stereotypical female roles.”

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My Concept - The Trait Game Second prototype created inspired by the Game of Life and Mad Game re-designs. The personality, gender and job you are given determines how well you do ‘in life.’

“Even though it was complicated to create and took a lot longer to design it is my favourite concept so far. I like the idea of your personality, gender and job determining ‘your life’ in the game and think it is something I could make really fun and relatable for all the family to play. I also thin it fits well with my aims for Final Major Project. This game was the one out of the 2 initial ideas that I decided to develop further.”

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Making my Game Addictive Board games are usually a family activity that happen once every now and again. Brainstorming was done to try and think of ways in which the game could be made into something where children would want to keep coming back to it.

“I want to keep my game fresh and modern, from my brainstorm I managed to come up with 4 separate directions for development of my ‘trait’ game. Some of these involved changing it from a board game to a different type of game.”

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Collectibles Route An alternative route instead of a board game could be collectibles as an idea. These can be very popular amongst children.

This route was all about whether the different traits and jobs could be made into separate parts. These would then be built up as a collection where children could combine different parts to get new bonuses.

“I like the idea of having parts you can build up but as far as collectibles go I feel like it might be too ambitious as I would struggle to come up with 100s of separate parts and combinations to keep the game going.�

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Trading Card Route This other alternative ideas to a board game involved scrapping the board and change the dynamic of the game to just trading cards.

“This route is one I am going to look into further as I can imagine this would be good for playing in schools as no board is required. It may not have many collectible parts to it but there could be a few different sets of cards to buy.�

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Board Upgrades Route Swapping the head/heart cards with QR code spots instead meaning the user could scan their smart device to see what comes up on their phone as the direction/situation to deal with.

“This route is one of my favourites of the 4. With the use of notifications on phones I could bring people back to the board game by updating it dependent on the time of the year or current events. It also means I can promote opposite gender stereotypes without the players knowing as they would never be able to see all the ‘cards.’”

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App Route Changing the dynamic and making the board game into an app.

“Even though I like the idea of doing an app I don’t think I want to lose the physical attributes of the game. It is definitely something I will be considering though and could possibly be combined with the board game or just be an alternative way of playing it.�

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Minor Interim During this interim both board game ideas were discussed and the different routes for making the game for addictive.

“The interim went really well, Ian and Mark both liked my ideas for the ‘trait’ game, the QR code route and the trading card version. I was really happy with how this meeting went and felt ready to move on with developing my ideas further. To move on with my design my next steps were to • • • •

Create a ‘my first’ version of the board game for 3-4 year olds Create a board game or ages 12+ Create a trading card version of the game Keep the element of using the QR code on the game”

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Skype Meeting with Mat Kipling Discussing current ideas for Final Major with Mat and learning about his experience as a toy designer.

“The meeting went well, however Mat has no experience in board games so couldn’t offer me much advice except for recommending companies to look at. He also gave me the advice to get in touch with parents as they are the ones who will be buying the game, especially the ‘my first’ version. This is definitely something I am going to do once I have created some more substantial prototypes.”

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Creating a ‘My First’ Version Looking at existing board games that cater for 3-4 year olds and getting inspiration from ‘Inside Out’ the movie.

“I saw that the board games use a lot of symbols and images to represent different words which simplifies down different concepts to children. ‘Inside Out’ was very insightful as well; it uses characters to simplify emotions and the human brain for children and I have been inspired by this to possibly create characters to represent traits.”

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Hasbro Correspondence An email was sent over to Patrick Otley to get an idea or whether the ‘trait’ game idea was commercially viable. Patrick used to work as a family board games designer at Hasbro.

“The feedback I got was that my current game was too educational and not fun enough. He suggested working on my main game to make it more fun and inspiring rather than moving onto a younger child’s version as of yet so I have decided from this point to take a step back and rethink my idea.”

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What Makes a Game Fun? Quick research task reading through a book called ‘A theory of fun for game design’ by Raph Koster to try and look for some insights into how to make a game fun to play.

“After my Hasbro feedback I felt a little stuck. I spoke to Mark and he suggested taking a step back and looking into what makes a game fun, this research really helped me out. I learnt many things through this task, one of the main points being that I need to make my game have surprises, the unexpected and keep the brain thinking throughout.”

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Brainstorming with my Peer Group This meeting happened in one of the pods in the studio. It was one of many sessions that have taken place, however this one was more significant than previous meetings.

“This really helped me out, I was struggling to come up with ideas on how to make my game more fun but getting other people’s perspective and talking through my current idea meant that I started to see new routes I could take.”

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Decision Making Advice was given by Patrick Otley to perfect the current ‘trait’ game before thinking about creating other versions.

“This advice was something I knew I needed to take on board. From this I decided to stick to one main game which I was going to choose an age range for and if I have time create another version at a later point. I also decided to cut off the trading card version as it was something that I had not even had time to think about and in the time available I don’t think it will be possible to get that and possibly 2 board games perfected.”

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Decision Making Deciding who my target audience was for the ‘trait’ game. This was a turning point for Final Major Project.

“This was a difficult point for me as however after weighing up what was going to be feasible I came to a decision of targeting the game at children aged 8+. If I have time I am going to look into creating a younger version later down the line.”

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Original game

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Developed original

Trait Game Iterations - Developed Version 1.0 Looking back at the original ‘trait’ game and developing it further into a more playable version for ages 8+. All the cards and rules were designed.

“Developing this game really helped me start to visualise what my potential final product could be. However, it is not much different than the original in terms of the mechanics of the game therefore I knew my next step was to iterate other versions based around the same principles.”

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Iteration 2

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Developed iteration 2

Trait Game Iterations - Developed Version 2.0 This second version ended up losing the gender and career aspects and is all based around personality traits. It also has an element where you build up your token through the game with personality blocks to ‘grow as a person.’ The board dynamic also changed to have different routes to follow.

“The reasoning behind losing some aspects was to try and simplify the game down and see whether people prefer a smaller amount of elements. However, I worry that by losing these aspects I am not getting across what I want children to learn through the game. Adding in the blocks was a way of injecting some fun by building your character, in the future these could be developed into actual character pieces (body parts). Having different routes to follow adds in the element of the unexpected/surprises which should make the game more fun.”

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Iteration 3

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Developed iteration 3

Trait Game Iterations - Developed Version 3.0 This game also just had personality as the only element that determines what happens to you in the game. The mechanics of how you go around the board changed to a non-linear path, you continue in circles. A new element of ‘luck’ zones has also been added where you could get good or bad luck dependent on the roll of the dice. Personality trait characters were added to the game too.

“The change in path was done to see whether people preferred a linear or non-linear route. Adding in the ‘luck’ zones is to keep the element of surprise present in this game too therefore making the game more fun. Re-iterating what Patrick had told me about creating fun, inspiring characters I designed the personality traits to hopefully help children understand personality in a simpler, creative way.”

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Iteration 4

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Developed iteration 4

Trait Game Iterations - Developed Version 4.0 This version brought back in gender and careers. The ‘jean’ pool is a concept where you pull out your XX or XY chromosomes.

Milestone points were added onto the board which have challenge cards with visual spatial or empathy challenges. “How did your life turn out?” was added at the end of the rule book. Dependent on your head/heart points the game would have different endings for you. This could also happen through the app and you can input your gender, trait, career and head/ heart points to get a more personalised story ending.

“I decided to add back in the gender and career elements as I was worried that losing them would mean that my game did not solve my problem for Final Major Project. The ‘jean’ pool and story endings both got added as a bit of a ‘take the micky’ bi of fun to make the topic of gender seem less educational. Even though adding challenges into the game may make individuals more well-rounded in life I feel like they make the game seem ‘education’ again so I would probably not want to take these forward.”

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Focus Group with Peers Conducting a focus group with peers to give their opinions on the 4 versions of the ‘trait’ game.

“The feedback I got from this was very helpful and constructive. This now means I can develop a new, even better version of my ‘trait’ game ready for major interim. After creating it as well I can start testing it on families and get their feedback.”

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Hasbro Correspondence 2 An email was sent over to Erin Deighton explaining my current 4 ‘trait’ game concepts. Erin used to work as a Senior Play Futurist at Hasbro.

“This email has been sent over to get some feedback on my current concepts and hopefully help me make decisions on what my next iteration will involve ready for testing and to present at my major interim.”

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Final Statement of Design Brief for Major Project Creating a plan of action to carry forward into the next stage of Final Major Project.

“The final statement I wrote has been made to show how I want my project to progress over the next couple of months. I have made decisions based on what my problem is, who it is going to be for, why it needs to change and what my goal is. I also feel like I have a clear idea of what I intend to do in the coming weeks ready for the final deadline.�

Main points Who? Children aged 8+.

What?

A board game based around gender, personality and career roles.

Why? To help encourage boys into stereotypical female roles to reduce the gender divide but whilst also encouraging females into stereotypical male roles.

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