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First published 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data


Names: Kasprisin, Ronald J., author.
Title: Play in creative problem-solving for planners and architects / By Ron Kasprisin.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049667| ISBN 9781138120044 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781138120051 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781315651965 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: City planning--Decision making. | Architectural design--Decision making. | Creative
thinking. | Play.
Classification: LCC HT166 .K3585 2016 | DDC 307.1/216--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049667

ISBN: 978-1-138-12004-4 (hbk)


ISBN: 978-1-138-12005-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65196-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Adobe Garamond


by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
experimentation.

Play
Play is an ancient, voluntary, “emergent” process driven by pleasure that
yet strengthens our muscles, instructs our social skills, tempers and
deepens our positive emotions, and enables a state of balance that leaves us
poised to play some more.
(Eberle, 2014, p. 231)

Play is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary (5th Edition) as the


occupation of oneself in an activity for amusement or recreation; and to take
part in a sport or game [usually with rewards]. These definitions indicate a
misconception of and confusion in our culture regarding the important role of
play as a learning experience—a way of creative thinking, and, as is explored
in this book, a necessary ingredient or agent in creative problem-solving.
Many psychologists support the idea that play is participation in an
imaginary situation with rules, where the rules emerge from the play-action,
not necessarily predetermined. Play occurs in all cultures with significant
differences in play-skills, objects and environments. The connecting principle
among cultural play is a recognition of the multiple possibilities of the free
activity understood as play (Shepard, 2011). Aside from play as a learning
endeavor for survival, play provides a space for joy (distinguished from fun),
experimentation and discovery, make-believe, cultural interaction, an
exchange of ideas and the removal or reduction of fear—no winner or loser.
Definitions and characteristics vary among psychologists on what
constitutes play. An accepted definition is as follows:

A voluntary activity pursued without ulterior purpose and on the whole


with enjoyment or expectation of enjoyment; a process whereby the player
incorporates external objects to his/her own thought schemata in a joyful
manner … amorphous and open ended.
(Lieberman, 1977, pp. 23, 19)

This is significant for the design/art professions: can we as adults play with
some ulterior purpose, i.e., a design assignment? What are external objects?
Are they games, computer programs, toys or symbolic objects? Do their uses
imply manual dexterity manipulations and crafting methods and skills? Is
open-endedness the same as the “uncertainty” principle? When play is
inserted into the CPS process, I argue that these challenges are positively
resolved.
Let me reinforce and expand the above definition from others compiled
from numerous psychology study sources that have direct application to the
design/art fields:

• Play is a free activity with free (not constrained) movements within


prescribed limits (not bound by goals and immediate material interests)
occurring temporarily outside of the real world, initially non-directed and
fluid, always subject to change, abrupt turns, etc.
• Play is an activity with no (direct) profit gain and contains no (immediate)
material interest with rules determined by and emergent from the play-
activity—this is a critical principle; integrated with motivation, possible
rapture/joy, performed in a “playground” or environment that together
insulates the player(s) from failure—thus no (or greatly reduced) fear.
• Play is a process of discovery and experimentation as opposed to simple
exploration (where a determined outcome is investigated). Exploration can
accompany play at various stages as discoveries are “evaluated” or
reflected upon. A novel or innovative outcome does not exist at the outset
of play and is only discovered in a thirdspace within the play-activity.
• Play is a process of mind–body activities, mental processing and cognitive
perception (thinking with the senses) that requires manual dexterity and
skill acquisition in order to engage in a consistent and quality performance
of play-activity—another critical principle that may cause some
consternation among die-hard technologists.
• Play both requires skills and is a learning process for those skills.
• Play is an integral catalytic agent in CPS. For me and through my
experiences, play is play-work where a carefree activity is also committed
and serious.
• Play by itself is not the sole conductor of creativity in the design/art
processes. Its insertion in CPS enables periods of play-activities that can be
less directed, experimental, with fewer rules, and be reinserted into the
larger CPS process.
Major elements of play, according to Eberle, include: anticipation, surprise,
pleasure, understanding, strength and poise. Eberle states that play may seem
purposeless to many but holds an abiding utility or deeper motive and
contingent objectives. As a part of the play process, he states that rule-
making also includes rule-breaking; subversion and mischief often become
part of the experience and fun; and play can go back and forth between
regulation and abandon, order and disorder, or contain both forces at once.
This is why it is considered a free activity, with initial rules that change as
play evolves and changes play as the rules evolve.
Playfulness is an attitude on how we play that helps us relax and engage in
the joy of the activities. Play combines or forms associations and
relationships from among known things, motivation, skill,
environment/context and freedom (from fear) that are essential to imagination
and creativity (Lieberman, 1977). Playfulness can be the catalyst for
thirdspace experimentations leading to the aha! moment whether in
architecture or physics. Playfulness is characterized by humor, joy and
spontaneity, enabling the designer to manipulate and contort that knowledge
into something unique, novel and creative.
Familiarity, clarity, simplicity and congruity are stimulation characteristics
that can trigger or encourage play; and novelty, ambiguity, incongruity,
uncertainty, surprise and complexity can trigger experimental and exploratory
behaviors that provide the fundamentals for play (Dewey, 1933).
In design and art processes there can be hesitation, fear or reticence about
starting or engaging the tasks at hand. The designer or player is best served
by increasing his or her confidence or self-centeredness through evolutionary
exercises. This increases their feeling of confidence regarding their
competence to achieve success in the task. Buhler (1930) refers to this as the
“function pleasure” and is the point where playfulness enters into play. Once
the novel or difficult becomes familiar, behavior can be altered from cautious
to exploratory or experimental.
Here are some consensus descriptions of play:

• Play is a voluntary action.


• Play is enjoyable.
• Play can be deferred or suspended at any time.
• Play is free.
• Play is a stepping out of real life into a temporary area of activity; it stands
outside of the satisfaction of wants and appetites.
• Play is a cultural function, necessary for the individual and society.
• Play contains its own course and meaning, beyond “local time.”
• Higher forms of play contain elements of repetition and alternation.
• Play occurs in a “playground,” emergent through initial notions and rules,
and changing as the play-activity advances, thus changing the
“playground.”
• Play is pretend and engaged with seriousness.
• Play is uncertain, open to chance and discovery.
• Play is a time to discharge energy (from surplus to tensions to driven
passions).
• Play is a time to recharge energy from negative (tensions) to positive
(arousal).
• Play is a time to practice skill development and the competence necessary
to apply them in CPS.
• Play is a time for growth (the design charrette/competitions example).

Attributes of Play
Attributes associated with play as opposed to work include humor, joy and
spontaneity.

• Humor: Humor is often seen in play as riddles or puns. Humor is a state of


amusement. The cognitive variables of humor that relate to play and design
include: (1) incongruity where the attitude is not in keeping with what is
correct or is out of place; (2) the humor involves or engages novelty,
surprise; (3) humor can assist in arriving at a mediating process; (4) humor
can assist the player in arriving at arousal; (5) holding reality in abeyance
and letting the fantasy elements play out further on a temporary basis; and
(6) the importance of visual imagery as a cognitive function for the
observer and player to appreciate the humor.
• Joy: An uplifting response, a form of arousal distinguished from fun; joy is
the motivating attribute that contributes to the desire to continue playing.
• Spontaneity: An activity that occurs in familiar surroundings, has
flexibility, unexpectedness, and enables the player to engage new situations
and changes in direction that may also be unconventional. In Chapter 7 I
explore the use of spontaneity in the production of ever-different products
from the same components in design composition exercises. And as in
“intuitiveness,” spontaneity depends on informational input, a body of
knowledge, information and contextual understanding as combinatorial
play to produce a creative product. In play, cognitive spontaneity can
transform a symbolic object into an entity, a given thing that can be played
with (Lieberman, 1977, p. 84).

These attributes can enable creative discoveries in design by removing or


reducing the pressures of accomplishment, over-focus and deadlines. Play
contains these attributes, freeing the player to engage the play-activity
without fear.

The Functions of Play


Play has key vital functions that relate to most cultures, including the
following:

• Play is related to the acquisition of skills, a fundamental function of life


and survival.
• Play enables the observation and retention of environmental information
beyond memory through sensual contact—whole mind–body contact.
• Play encourages the development of normative social behavior (and
healthy non-conventional or experimental behavior—there is no criticism
or fear of failure; and this healthy non-conventional behavior needs to be
recognized as healthy and possibly creative by instructors and managers
alike.
• Play enables the discovery and release of previously unformed emergent
notions.

Play enables the processing and flow of information insulated from “failure”
or fear because in part it embraces failure. Play also introduces the simulative
mode of thinking where play assists in uncoupling a process output from its
normal relations to other systems at multiple levels, enabling experimentation
without failure. Feedback is maintained, fear is not a factor, there is no
finality, and the decrease in fear enables an increase in confidence and quality
of engagement.
Psychologists agree that play is crucial for normal social, emotional and
cognitive development. Play is a mechanism to cultivate creativity, solve
problems and generate ideas (Brown, 2009). One key function of play is the
opportunity it offers to reassemble behavioral sequences for skilled action
(Bruner, 1966), reconfiguring convention sequences into creative
experimentation. This underscores the need to reduce goal-directed actions
that can be predetermined or so structure the process that the outcome is
predictable or limited in possible outcomes. The push or pressures to
successfully accomplish something can lead to fear or pressured
manifestations, raising barriers to creativity. Play can reduce excessive drive
and related frustrations (Bruner, 1966).

The Flexibility Complex: Meta-play


Reynolds states that “play must be viewed as part of an adaptive complex
involving ontogenetic plasticity in behavior, an (inexperienced or
undeveloped) dependency, a capacity for learning from previous action, and
(leadership/instructor/guide) care” (Glover et al., 1989, p. 622).
For Reynolds, this is the “flexibility complex” and it provides a range of
evolutionary options in creativity. The following is an application of that
complex using play in the design process:

• An increased delay in the maturation of decision-making by the designer


by extending the time for learning through joy and arousal—avoiding a
rush to cliché and naivety—a positive development.
• A greater reliance on pre-play social developments (with colleagues, the
community, etc.).
• An increased ability to manipulate objects and incorporate them into
instrumental behavior and constructive creative products; playing with
objects requires ample time to successfully engage play in a creative way.
• An increased reliance on observational learning for the acquisition of both
behavior patterns and environmental information.
• A progressive increase in complexity of the subculture of the play group
(team, studio-mates).
• The acquisition of functions that enable the continued existence and
usability of the play group functions, one-day sketch problems, internal
design charrettes or intensives.

[W]ith the advent of observational learning (object lessons), new behavior


patterns and their environmental consequences are learned in play,
organized, and made available to non-lay control.
(Glover et al., 1989, p. 627)

As play is explored for adults in the design fields, rules must not dominate as
in video games, sports, etc., reducing the essence of play. The state of design
education and the professional office, immersed as it is in a digital-
technological fascination, can bifurcate learning and playing, trivializing play
in the process. Design education and practice can “transform not knowing
into a deficit; creative imitation into individualized accomplishments, rote
learning and testing, and completion into correction and competitiveness”
(Connery et al., 2010, p. 36). Imitation is necessary in creative problem-
solving as a starting point at a minimum, since it is critical in skill
development. In adults, continued imitation can give way to copying or clip-
art; losing the creative edge. Imitation is explored in the suggested exercises
in Chapter 7.

Combinatory Play
Combinatory play is the conscious and unconscious cognitive playful
manipulation of two or more ideas, feelings, sensory experiences, images,
objects, sounds or words. Players experiment with hypotheses, possible
outcomes, and even “failures”; they then compare, contrast, synthesize and
break apart disparate elements or constructs in re-envisioning a larger whole
(Stevens, 2014). I remember an exercise from undergraduate school where
the instructor placed disparate ideas and concepts in a hat and had each
student pick out three and begin a design process with those three ideas—
quite challenging to say the least. It aided in eliminating clichés and set
patterns in the design process.

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