Designing for the Real Child: Toy Designers and Psychologists in Dialogue on Reversal Theory

The social sciences constitute a rich potential source of theoretical contexts for understanding human behaviour, not all of which are easily accessible to designers. Dialogue between social scientists and designers should, therefore, improve design outcomes. Within the setting of a course on design for children’s play, such a dialogue between psychologists and design students was organized around Reversal Theory, a psychological theory that describes relations between arousal levels and hedonic tone underlying the experience of situations. This theory has been little explored in design. The project showed that psychologists and designers were, through discussion, able to connect theory to practical implications for design by entering each other’s domain, and by discussing design ideas as carriers of psychological concepts. The paper reflects on, and supports, the value of Reversal Theory for toy design and should be seen as just one example of the value of sustained direct dialogue between the social sciences and design.