Playground equipment for sand and water play

Sammanfattning: To many families and children, playground visits are an important part of the daily life. Playing there can offer benefits like physical activity as well as practicing skills such as social interaction or creative ability. The purpose of the master thesis presented in this report, was to develop a new product line with playground equipment for HAGS Aneby AB. The playground equipment should allow the child to play with sand and/or water while encouraging different aspects of the child’s development. The target group is children age 2-5. The design process started off with a user study where theory and own observations were combined. The user study resulted in several product requirements. Based on these a large number of concepts were generated. Concepts were evaluated and elaborated. Eventually there were three concepts left, which together constitutes the product line. The design process consisted largely of prototyping and model building. The prototypes were tested with children of suitable ages at various stages of the development process. The product line consists of: • Thirsty Monkey – a water system where the children are challenged to use their minds. • Bug Race – a maze-like game where the children need to collaborate. • Café Parrot – a play station which encourages pretend play in different forms. The three concepts do as a whole encourage different aspects of the children’s development and would complete HAGS existing playground equipment well.