KYLE POINTER
Product Design
Playing hard or hardly playing? An investigation into the impacts of play in the workplace.
My final year Dissertation was a research report into the impacts of play in the workplace.
After returning from a one year internship at The LEGO Group as a Prototypes Engineer, I had a particularly playful outlook on the work environment and wanted to explore it further to see what the deeper effects of encouraging play at work are.
An initial literature review explores the history of the work ethic and the psychology behind play. This leads into a three-part research study based around the types of play that can be utilised in different work environments and their respective impacts.
Three methods of research were conducted and triangulated to produce accurate and reliable data. Interviews with four employees of the The LEGO Group, a 25 participant survey from the Nottingham Trent University Library, and four photo observations of the Google SuperHQ in London.
These methods were chosen based on their relevance in respect to the organisation, while the organisations were chosen due to the access (NTU Library), personal experience and contacts (The LEGO Group) and reputation (Google SuperHQ).
