The Science of Successful Playground Designs

Raising the Bar on Effective Playground Equipment Design

Raise the bar? Seriously, the only time I want the bar raised is if I'm in a limbo contest.

The origin of this phrase comes from literally raising the bar in the track and field high jump.
You've cleared the last height, so it makes sense to raise that bar to see if you can clear the next height and so on. Outside of track and field, we often see this concept get misused and mis-strategized throughout many industries.

"We're going to raise the bar, because you didn't clear the last one." That … seems counterproductive. "Try harder" isn't much of a strategy. "Jump higher" isn't a plan. Instead, let's find out why and work together on elevating the skills, techniques, mindset, focus, physical requirements, and whatever else is involved in a given sport, skill, course, or occupation.

Custom Playgrounds Designed for Development

Raising the bar also refers to raising standards or expectations. Expecting more of others or even ourselves isn't a strategy either. By itself, it's just an unrealistic expectation, backed by nothing. What are you going to do about it is really the question. When it comes to the science of playground design (yes, there's a science to it), the good ones are created with developmental continuum in mind. What?

Age-Appropriate Play Space Considerations

Most playground designs are broken into age groupings. The two most common are systems designed for 2-5 year olds and 5-12 year olds. Most of the biggest differences here are in the height of the playground components. Obviously, the 5-12 year olds can have much higher play activities than those of a 2-5 design.

Other playground design differences are in the individual play activity products where the developmental challenges are age-appropriately designed. To "raise the bar," a well-designed system will incorporate a continuum to challenge abilities as a child progresses through and with that playground.

How Children Balance Play and Growth

Children are very fast at leveling up, but there are still individual paces in which this happens. A challenge today is nothing tomorrow, but for some, it may still be a challenge. However, they're navigating it with much more dexterity, confidence, and skill.

They will raise the bar on themselves. All we have to do is let them. "Hey, Jimmy, come on, use the monkey bars. Let me help you up. Grab the bar."

Jimmy pushes back, "No, no, no!"

It seems high and he wasn't ready. Now maybe because of that, he steers clear of the monkey bars for a long time, when, if left alone, he may have done it tomorrow. If he asks to be lifted up, that's a different story. He's ready to go! When we raise the bar on others forcefully, it can have the opposite effect we were looking to achieve.

While a child is playing, a lot is going on inside and it's very personal. Going up to that higher deck is an uncomfortable decision, but they're doing it. Make sure they're safe and be observant, but let them do their thing. By balancing their play with incremental challenges, they get to move at their own pace.

Nature of Child-Led Development in Playgrounds

Kids often self-graduate from a lower-level play panel to the monkey bars. Today they test it, tomorrow they traverse it (which is a huge victory), and one day it just isn't that challenging anymore and they raise the bar on themselves, moving onto the 5-12 playground and the continuum begins again.

While this all sounds physical, it's much more than that: through all this, it develops critical thinking skills, spatial awareness, and resiliency. It stimulates tactical perceptions, visual perception of distance, and gross and fine motor skills. More? How about kinesthetic awareness, cognitive development, proprioception, and vestibular development, not to mention the development of social skills and navigating risk-taking.

Burke playgrounds are scientifically engineered through research, designed to encourage children to raise the bar on themselves.

To learn more of have one of our design professionals help you with your next project, call 800-921-4509 or email us at info@toplinerec.com

Now, where's that limbo stick?

The Art, Science, and Consequences of Playground Color Schemes

If we need a hammer drill, would we go to a furniture store?  How about a suit or a dress?  Would we go to Best Buy?  We wouldn’t go to GameStop for a ping pong table no more than we’d go to an appliance store to buy a watch or a purse or makeup or shoes or … okay, you get the picture.   

What if there was a store like that?  Well … there was and it was called Sears.  One of the biggest reasons Sears ceased to exist is that they became everything and nothing at the same time.  Sears lost it’s identity because, according to George Troy, author of the Five Laws of Retail, upper management focused on financial shell games to enrich themselves personally and to appear successful in the short term.  They profited, but at the cost of killing Sears.

Back in the 1980’s Pepsi’s marketing department launched the Pepsi Challenge.  Pepsi vs Coca Cola in a blind taste test and guess what; most people picked Pepsi.  Great for marketing, but here’s the problem; it was a one-sip test.  Pepsi was much sweeter than Coke and in the short term, our senses loved it.  In the long-term though, too sweet is just too sweet and people went back to Coca Cola.  Even today, Coca Cola is worth $65-Billion more than Pepsi, even though Pepsi is a much larger company with many more different brands.  Hmm.      

When we mix all the paint colors together on a palette, we don’t get an explosion of color.  Instead, we get a drab, gray sludge.  Some colors and various shades of those colors are more colorful than other colors.  Individual colors can compliment other colors, making each even more vivid.  Doing this strategically makes the whole more colorful.

At the back of a Playground catalog, there’s a color palette with examples of playground designs in different mixes of colors and they’re brilliant.  There’s an art and science to it, but many years ago, I got the idea that I was smarter than that and created a playground with various colors that I picked.  Looking back on it, it was like pushing Bob Ross aside, while slapping various paints onto the canvas.  I had no idea what I was doing and when I saw the finished product, I realized I created a gray sludge with no artistic theme or identity.  All of the individual colors lost their value.

Sears tried to be everything to everybody and became nothing to nobody.  Pepsi won the battle but lost the war.  Well they’re not exactly losing by any stretch, but you get the analogy.

Instead, consider the audience.  What does this playground design mean in this space, in this community, in this park?  What are we trying to accomplish?  Narrow that down and get real focused on the “why”.  Is it about nature and outdoors, is it about a colorful wow factor, is there a theme to this area that relates to certain colors? 

Maybe there isn’t any of that, but in any case, going to a color palette that was designed by a trained and experienced expert is probably the best way to go.  They know color schemes and how certain colors affect other colors, creating an identity for each design so that it will engage with the human spirit.

Otherwise, we might get an unappealing gray sludge with no identity and no staying power.

Photo by Chaewon Lee on Unsplash