Parents feel the pressure to entertain. Among many forms of entertainment that happen in-door, pretend play is particularly mentally demanding for parents to orchestrate. Compared with children's boundless imagination, high-energy level, and their reasoning that’s in development, parents struggle to keep up with the imaginative leaps and bond with children cross-generationally.

A user shadowing activity helped me emphasize. In addition to interviewing parents, I accompanied a mother and her third-grade girl named Azaria to gain firsthand experience of how children craft make-believe situations and involve others in their play. I was able to connect with the challenges of engaging in routine play as caregivers and identify potential avenues for enhancing the overall experience.

Pretend play is mostly single-sided steered by kids in a way that feels spontaneous and unpredictable to adults. Rules are changed at a whim, and adult participants have to overcome mental load to steer pretend play constructively. What if we help parents shift their role from passive participators towards creative facilitators ?

Importantly, helping parents to lead is different from imposing rules to play. In the early iteration of user testing, I realized that parent and kids didn’t click with stories that are more task-oriented, as the ‘Get Well Doctor’ one shown below. Too much guidelines may hinder the natural flow and imaginative aspects of the play. We thus shifted to designing stories that are more open-ended.

From surveys, I also discovered that many parents tend to be biased toward structural play over unstructured one. When asked about the most preferred forms of play for achieving learning objectives, pretend play was overshadowed by activities like solving puzzles, stacking geometric blocks, or tweaking science kits. It is fuzzy to see ‘progress’ when it comes to pretend play. How do we communicate the value and foster a bigger appreciation for its role in a child’s development?

Pivoting from skill building to mindset building. Initially, we used a 'motor, emotional, speech, and intellectual' framework to define the skill-enhancement outcomes of pretend play. Yet, few parents utilized this framework when choosing stories to engage with. I realized that parents often opt for toys and content that resonate with their self-esteem and aspirations. I led the team to shift towards communicating the qualities and mindsets through that stories cultivate rather than skills.

Parents desire to document and share the delightful and creative moments of their children to cherish their unique experiences. Noticing that parents would switch to camera during play quite often to capture these instances, we added a toolkit that pops out with a click to make it handy.

New Logo - I created a new design of Melissa&Doug PLAY logo as a visual embodiment of M&D’s commitment to fostering children's development and mindset. The geometric shapes symbolize the limitless possibilities of storytelling that shape a child's growth journey.

It was most exciting for me to discover the experience gap in play between parents and kids. The negative emotional states associated with play can seem contradictory to our expectations of how parents would feel. Delving into the sense of inadequacy about their parental proficiency in guiding and shaping their kids 'in the right way,' along with the guilt stemming from being unable to fully partake in the joy of play enabled me to conceive of solutions that have a positive impact on these often overlooked caregivers."

Parents love our concept! The prompts that occur across the story elicited a lot of positive feedback from the parents. I am glad that we eventually honed in on bringing high quality content that facilitates discussions and open-ended interpretations so that adult audiences can also reflect, explore, and influence their little ones with more confidence. This concept holds the promise of bridging the generational gap in content consumption and makes room for shared memories that endure the test of time - the best form of parent-child play dynamic I envision.