Designing interactive play experiences for sick children in hospital

For sick children, hospitals provide a challenging environment for the development of a positive sense of self. I believe the opportunity for creative self-expression plays an important role for hospitalised children to develop such as positive sense of self. In response I have designed workshops to support such self-expression around a positive sense of self using Co-Design, Desensitization and Lecoq’s theatre techniques. These workshops centered around two interactive digital games I designed: ‘Doctor Giggles’ and ‘X-Safari’ that aim to reframe and personalise children’s hospital experiences. The workshops were developed in two different hospitals from Spain: Hospital de La Fe (Valencia) and Hospital Sant Joan de Dea (Barcelona). 23 children and 17 family relatives participated in the workshops. The main age of the children was between 7 to 10 years old. The outcomes from the workshops suggest that designing personalised play for sick children by reframing the hospital environment, medical equipment, procedural tasks and family relationships through humour and creativity can support the development of children’s positive sense of self. In order to guide other designers and play therapists in facilitating such workshops, I have derived three design dimensions - bodily representations, bodily auto-topography and bodily creative communication and a set of design tactics. These insights are aimed at contributing to our understanding of how to support sick children in hospital.