Is Alice Still in Wonderland?

Play, defined as an activity engaged in for amusement, is doubtlessly in everywhere: in any kind of real or virtual medium of today’s contemporary world. It is the phenomena of which an egg shelled chocolate, Kinder Surprise TM and Çelik TM, a robot icon regenerating the identity of a local firm producing electronic products and home appliances, has in common where it begins to penetrate into our lives. As penetrating into every day life and becoming an aspect of it, play gets in touch with design where these two begin to interact.

The aim of this paper is trying to find out what has happened / is happening to play phenomena in relation with design by following its blueprints among children’s and adults’ ‘act of playing’ within local and global cultural basis as well as bearing the questions below in mind.

Can we say that play and design have a mutual relationship by which both nourish each other? Where does design stand during play’s penetration to life- is it a part of play or a mediator defining the rules of play? Does design use play on behalf of filling our emotional gaps and succeed in it - for example by replacing a real pet within an electronic one? Can play turn out to be something else feeding on today’s so-called hyper-real life or has it already turned into one and changed the concept of life within itself where any product has turned into a ‘toy’ itself?