A methodological approach to design an inclusive interior children’s play space: from observation to interview

The research presented in this article is part of a PhD project, whose objective was to identify a set of characteristics to be implemented while creating an inclusive indoor children's play space. This article aims to create an interview guide directed at children, inquiring their preferences regarding the possible characteristics of a play space for them. In order to do that it was necessary to first understand the main existing characteristics of children's play spaces, in order to verify those thare are transversal to them. For the first stage, observation, an auxiliary grid was structured to ensure that the same characteristics were observed across spaces. The analysis of this data created the content for the questions belonging to the script (second stage). It was thus concluded that the script should be composed of eight thematic groups: decoration, furniture, architecture, play activities, communication, accessibility and constraints. In these groups, each question is presented to the child with the specific purpose of identifying the aspects needed to implement an interior and inclusive children's play space. The results are fundamental for the creation of new areas for children, seen as through the new script it becomes possible to inquire any population, thus learning the preferences of the children all over the world. In this sense, designers who want to know their users would only have to apply the script in their interviews.This research project is funded by FCT’s scholarship nº SFRH/BD/84124/2012. This work is financed by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Programme - COMPETE and by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136.