By: Tom Norquist, Senior Vice-President of Innovation, PlayCore, Inc.
Play is often thought of as something children do when their more serious responsibilities are finished. We associate it with playgrounds, recess, toys, and free time.
But play is not separate from learning, healing, worship, movement, or community. Play helps make those experiences possible.
Play is a fundamental human need. It supports how people explore, communicate, connect, create, recover, and grow. It can be active or quiet, structured or spontaneous, physical or imaginative. It can happen on a playground, in a classroom, in a healthcare waiting room, at a community center, or on a church campus.
Our goal is to advocate for play-centered environments across the spaces where people gather, learn, heal, worship, move, and build relationships. When environments are thoughtfully designed to invite play, they can help people feel more welcome, engaged, confident, and connected.
Designing for play is not simply about adding colorful features or entertaining distractions. It is about creating places that support human flourishing. Let’s consider the following science-based attributes of play:
Play is a fundamental human need.
Play is sometimes dismissed as optional or recreational. In reality, play is one of the ways people make sense of the world and their place within it.
Through play, children test ideas, develop skills, practice social interaction, and learn how to navigate challenges. Adults use play to relax, connect with others, explore creativity, and recharge. Older adults can experience play through movement, games, storytelling, music, and shared activities.
Play changes throughout life, but the need for it remains.
People are naturally drawn to curiosity, discovery, movement, humor, creativity, and connection. These qualities are at the heart of play. They help us engage more fully with our surroundings and with one another.
A playful experience may be as simple as trying something new, solving a problem in an unexpected way, laughing with another person, or becoming absorbed in an activity. Play gives people permission to participate, experiment, experience joy and one of my favorites is losing track of time.
Play is more than a specific activity. It is also a state of being.
A person can be in a playful state when they are curious, open, engaged, imaginative, and willing to explore possibilities. Play invites people to move beyond simply observing their surroundings. It encourages them to interact with the world around them.
A child building an imaginary world is playing. So is a family laughing together at a church event, a student experimenting with a new idea, a patient exploring an interactive feature in a waiting room, or a group of neighbors taking part in a community activity.
Play creates space for discovery rather than requiring a single correct answer. It makes experimentation feel safer. It encourages people to take manageable risks, adapt when something does not work, and try again.
This state of being is valuable at every age. It can support learning, creativity, relationships, and emotional well-being. Designing for play does not mean designing only for children. It means creating environments that support the human capacity for curiosity, participation, and connection.
Play engages the whole person—body, mind, and emotions. Most curriculums in child development recognize the physical, social, emotional and cognitive benefits of play. Play scientists further discuss the positive aspects of brain development and function from free spontaneous play.
Active play encourages movement, coordination, balance, strength, and body awareness. It can help people develop positive relationships with physical activity by making movement enjoyable and purposeful.
For children, active play supports the development of motor skills and physical confidence. For adults and older adults, accessible movement opportunities can support mobility, vitality, balance and continued participation in community life.
Play can also provide a natural way for people to change their energy level. It may help someone become more active, more alert, or more physically relaxed depending on the experience.
Play supports emotional well-being by giving people opportunities to experience choice, accomplishment, creativity, and control.
These experiences can be especially valuable in settings where people may feel uncertain or powerless. A child in a healthcare environment, for example, may benefit from having something engaging to explore. A student may feel more confident when given the freedom to experiment. A visitor to a community center may feel more comfortable when the environment provides an accessible way to participate.
Play also creates room for healthy emotional expression. It can help people redirect attention, release energy, manage frustration, and recover from stress.
Play is also a powerful social experience. Shared play encourages communication, cooperation, empathy, negotiation, and laughter.
When people play together, they learn about one another. They practice taking turns, listening, responding, and solving problems as a group. They also create shared memories and experiences that can strengthen relationships.
A thoughtfully designed environment can give people a reason to gather, interact, and connect in ways that may not otherwise occur.
The environments people enter every day communicate what is welcome, who belongs, and how people are expected to participate.
A space can invite play through:
Visual interest and imaginative storytelling
Opportunities for movement and discovery
Interactive features
Flexible spaces and multiple ways to participate
Areas for both activity and quiet reflection
Comfortable seating and gathering areas
Inclusive access for people of different ages and abilities
Clear pathways that make exploration feel safe and intuitive
By contrast, a space may inhibit play when it feels overly rigid, confusing, inaccessible, uncomfortable, or disconnected from the people who use it.
Designing for play requires looking at the entire experience. How do people arrive? What do they see first? Where can they gather? What can they touch, explore, or imagine? Is there room for caregivers, staff, family members, and observers? Can people participate at different comfort levels?
The goal is not to make every environment loud, busy, or overstimulating. The goal is to make environments more human—responsive to how people move, feel, interact, and make meaning together.
Churches are places of worship, reflection, service, and community. Play can support each of these functions by helping people feel more welcome and connected.
Play-centered features can create natural gathering points for children and families before and after services. They can encourage intergenerational interaction and make a church campus feel active and inviting beyond a single scheduled event.
Outdoor play areas, imaginative environments, and flexible gathering spaces can communicate that families are valued and that community is built through everyday moments of connection.
Play can also make social interaction feel less intimidating. Shared activities give people a natural reason to talk, participate, and form relationships.
Healthcare and dental environments can feel unfamiliar and intimidating, especially for children. Waiting, examinations, and treatment may involve uncertainty, fear, and a perceived loss of control.
Thoughtfully designed playful and immersive environments can help make these experiences more welcoming. Interactive features may provide distraction and engagement. Thematic environments can make clinical spaces feel less unfamiliar. Opportunities for play can give children something positive to focus on while helping them feel more comfortable in their surroundings.
These environments can also support parents, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. When children are more engaged and at ease, the overall experience may feel more manageable for everyone involved.
Play does not replace excellent clinical care. It complements care by helping create an environment that recognizes the emotional needs of children and families.
Recreation centers are natural places for play, but they also have an opportunity to expand who participates and what play can look like.
A play-centered community environment can support:
Organized programs and spontaneous activity
Vigorous movement and quiet connection
Individual challenges and group experiences
Children, teens, adults, families, and older adults
A range of physical, sensory, and cognitive abilities
These outcomes are not created by design alone. They emerge through the interaction between people and their environment. But design can make those interactions more likely.
A space that supports play communicates an important message: You are welcome here. You can participate. You can explore. You can connect. There is room for your needs, your ideas, and your way of engaging.
Every organization makes decisions about the environments it creates. Those decisions influence how people feel, how they interact, and what they believe is possible in a space.
Investing in play-centered environments is more than an investment in equipment or aesthetics. It is an investment in well-being, belonging, healthy development, stronger relationships, and more vibrant communities.
For church leaders, that may mean creating a campus where families feel connected.
For healthcare administrators, it may mean making a difficult experience more supportive.
For recreation professionals, it may mean expanding participation and strengthening community ties.
For educators, it may mean creating conditions where curiosity and learning can thrive.
For architects and designers, it may mean shaping spaces that respond more fully to the people who use them.
The power of play is not limited to one product, one age group, or one type of facility. It is a human capacity that can be supported across the environments where people gather, learn, heal, worship, move, and grow.
When we design with play in mind, we design for more than activity.
We design for possibility.
And when more people have access to spaces that invite curiosity, connection, creativity, and joy, we take a meaningful step toward human flourishing.
When people enter your space, what does the environment invite them to feel and do?
Does it invite participation, connection, and discovery—or does it simply direct people from one function to the next?
The answer may reveal an opportunity to design more intentionally for the people your space serves.
Because play belongs everywhere.
And every environment has the potential to help bring it to life.
Tom Norquist is a member of PlayCore's Strategic Services team and leads a culture of innovation and business development activities while additionally guiding GameTime's custom play division. He works closely with more than 50 team members to lead successful product and program innovation. Tom has 35 years experience in the commercial play and recreation industry and 25 years with PlayCore.
Photo/video credits: Wacky World Studios, Bourbonnais Township Park District, and Special Care, Inc.