Opportunity Spaces for Children ́s Informal Learning in Public Environments

This paper introduces my PhD research on how a tangible and embodied technological layer can enhance and enlarge an existing public space to promote children’s informal learning (IFL). IFL is increasingly recognized as the basis for education, as children learn through social, creative, and playful interactions. IFL is rooted in daily lives and expands the children´s sphere of action beyond their confined social spaces in public and educational institutes. Using the urban environment makes education more accessible to a broad group. Therefore, I will create conditions and structures that make informal educational processes possible and available. I seek to achieve opportunity spaces by fostering alternative experimentational approaches. Through implementing design interventions in the public, I will playfully appropriate the existing and create opportunity spaces for IFL. The design intervention should open up children’s creativity, encourage social interaction, and enhance mental health, which is often neglected in the education system.


INTRODUCTION
Informal learning (IFL) is a spontaneous and unplanned method of acquiring knowledge and skills through everyday experiences [2].Technology can create additional layers to existing surroundings, reimagining and reappropriating built environments [26].Interaction technologies have been used in educational and developmental settings to support and improve learning [7,14].The proposed PhD aims to investigate creating children's opportunity spaces for IFL by adding a technological layer onto existing spaces through environmental appropriation.Interventions will be designed to playfully appropriate public areas, fostering children's creativity, encouraging social interaction, and enhancing mental health.The research will combine concepts from multiple disciplines, including ethnomethodological observations, critical artistic research, and design speculations.The research will investigate the impact of a critical, playful, and somatic perspective on the environment children inhabit.The outcomes will include interaction strategies, design interventions, and recommendations on designing everyday appropriation to enlarge children´s opportunity space through technology.

MOTIVATIONS
I am a dyslexic and creative individual who struggled with learning in traditional school settings.Why that?Because I am a playful experiencer who makes use of the body to perceive and sense the world around me.I do have a background in speculative design, social design, and exhibition design, where I create objects and spaces but also invite people to participate in workshops to discuss and design together on how we want to inhabit our world.In my PhD, I will create spaces for and with children who want to experiment through alternative lenses, supporting their creativity and allowing them to explore the colorful world of learning in public spaces.The thesis aims to integrate IFL into a technologyenhanced environment, promoting a playful, free, and creative Figure 2: Through the appropriation of space, an additional tech layer will be topped onto the base layer of the public space, whereas an opportunity space can evolve for IFL learning method [1,8,10,11].Therefore, I will create interventions for children's appropriation, allowing them to open up their creativity, encourage social interaction, and enhance mental health, as these categories are often left out in formal institutions [1,3,7,22].I will also draw on a tangible and embodied approach to create alternatives to conventional education.The design language of the envisioned opportunity spaces should be expanded to include multiple sensory levels, such as sound, touch, or smell.The use of technology in public spaces allows for expanded, child-centred planning and can take into account the sensory and qualities of the physical space [23].I want to ensure that my research includes the impact of co-existing bodies, objects and buildings on children's environments [21].The city is a living space for many identities, people, genders, groups, and minorities, and immersive technologies offer opportunities to overlay digital experiences onto the physical world or create expanded places for more than one reality [6,17,19,25].The vision of the project is to create a playful, tangible, embodied, sonic, or sensual space that supports informal learning in public space and transforms traditional pedagogic approaches for a greater variety of personalities and identities [14].

RELATED WORK 3.1 Informal Learning and the Use of Playfulness
Children spend 20% of their days in school, while 80% of their days are spent outside of institutional contexts, where they experiment, explore, and interact socially [9].Education can be divided into formal, non-formal, and informal learning (IFL), which includes experimental, incidental, and random learning [22].IFL is nonstructured, non-plannable, and cannot be evaluated [22,24].It can be found at home, on playgrounds, in schools, on public spaces, with family, friends, objects, digital media, and through playful interaction [4].Children create spaces through their playful activities in existing surroundings that they (re)appropriate and temporarily inhabit.They learn in those spaces and create the foundation of their knowledge [4].I will look at literature and design work that promotes the use of technology with a playful, social, and mindful learning concept.Research has shown that the combination of creativity with technology can have significant educational potential [10].The optimal conditions for creative and playful learning are presented through self-directed, object-based play with a selfdetermined objective.Parten's and Corsara focused on social behavior, interaction strategies, and sharing routines [2,18] and Wyeth also included in her study the children's interactions with each other, with the environment, the use of resources during creative and constructive play [29].Building up on that, Wyeth identified implications for designing playful technology, emphasizing that technology should be open for different uses and interaction opportunities [29].Furthermore, she also identified three types of free play activities through her observations: calm, play, and artistic.Jarusriboonchail et al. defined several points when designing with technology, including flexibility, simplicity, open-endedness, anytime visitability, and larger design creations in physical dimension [10].Tabel et al. suggested that children's free play and creative learning are influenced by social interaction and collaboration, allowing multiple users to participate in the creation process and that technology should be easily imitated, allowing children to learn from their peers' creations [10].

The Appropriation of Urban Space
Children sometimes playfully create a place for themselves, using structures and objects to transform existing spaces and appropriate the place [4].They invent places to linger, play, interact, and be creative.Studies also confirm that there are potential and benefits to creating space for children´s education and playfulness in the public environment [4,9].According to Hassinger et.al., revitalizing public space can be important for unprivileged children.Open space can be designed as an embodied learning landscape and an expansion of the educational surroundings.As some children do not have the same educational possibilities as others, access to a public learning space can also be a valuable, equitable opportunity for them to learn outside educational establishments [9].
The unique qualities of public places are a result of how people utilize, appropriate, reinterpret, and define them.The use of the public space is a citizen's right, as Rodriguez supports [12].He further defines the usage as the temporary act of using public places for individual or group activities other than those for which they were initially intended.The term "appropriation" is rooted in environmental psychology to refer to an ephemeral phenomenon that suggests a dynamic procedure of interaction between the person and their environment [12].
It is worth noting here that cities have a predefined layout, public spaces are clearly defined, and the in-between spaces with no connotation are limited [19][20][21]28].The planning of the cities is often not oriented towards the demands and needs of the young generation, who is also hardly involved in the design process of future urban space [9].

Multiple layers of Technology
Technology can be used to (re)appropriate and revitalize (public) space [17].The trend of integration into the built environment of existing cities is more and more going towards ubiquitous computing, embedded systems, and the Internet of things [27].Also, the research field of Urban Interaction design, Architectonic Interactions and Media Architecture focuses on technology with multiple layers.As Wiberg states, the new opportunities that appear in the physical environment open space for reimagining and reappropriating the built environment [26].The main objective of media architecture is the technological enhancement of public space to improve how people engage with and claim ownership of the environment.Nguyen et al. describe that media architecture focuses on humancentered urban technology, which also often uses playful designs, asks humans to liner, helps to explore new locations, invites people for mental rest and fosters a feeling of community through social contact [17].Implementation options are using artefacts, visual or acoustic elements that implicitly or apparently involve the user in interacting with their physical environment [6,17,23].
Tangible and haptic interaction interfaces in the environment are considered highly beneficial for children´s development, especially with the emergence of screen-based technology in recent years [7,8,13,15].Liang et al. conducted studies on Tangible User Interfaces for children's creative learning education and psychology in Human-Computer Interaction [15].Jarusriboonchai et al. state that technological education has the power to cultivate, but traditional digital tools and curricula do not really foster open-ended imaginative, playful, and creative behavior [10].Common educational kits mostly teach the basics of coding, whereas Tangible User Interfaces designs sometimes do not allow abstractness, openness, richness, and complexity [15].Within digital learning in schools, the technology lacks the possibility of free play and constructive play ´in the wild´and often follows the restrictions of the predefined learning purpose.Studies investigated how technologies can be included more naturally into the ways children are already playing and self-directed learning [10].

Build on Theoretical Background
My work aligns closely with the previously mentioned research studies of the related work.The motivation of my thesis is to integrate IFL which includes experimental, incidental, and random learning into a surrounding enhanced with technology [22].Working on the topic of education I will promote a playful learning approach as free, constructive, open-ended and creative learning [7,8,11].I will be using some guidelines and lenses of the related work for the observations, artistic research and design interventions.I will find out how to naturally implement a tech layer into the spaces children inhabit to provide an opportunity space for IFL.The use of media architecture, tangible and embodied interaction technology will support my research intentions to open children's creativity, encourage social interaction, and enhance mental health in public spaces.Through my research, I will contribute to literature and design works that promote the use of technology with a playful, social, and mindful learning concept.

APPROACH
I plan to develop a theoretical framework for my PhD research on informal learning and space appropriation.I will review the literature on these topics and draw on approaches from playful interaction and urban planning to understand how informal learning can be created in public spaces.The research will involve observation of children in public spaces and their interactions with the environment and each other, using a qualitative approach.The basis for this is a qualitative approach, whereby ethnomethodology is suitable for observing the peculiarities of people's everyday lives at a micro level and capturing the multi-layered dimensions of the used environment [16].In a design workshop, children will design their opportunity space for informal learning.I will make use of a speculative design approach, challenging societal, cultural, and technological norms.I will engage in reflective and reflexive practices, using speculative and imaginative techniques to envision alternative futures.Narrative and storytelling techniques will be used with the children to convey findings while questioning societal norms and assumptions.Critical design research is a powerful tool for sparking conversations, raising awareness, and encouraging critical thinking about the impact of design on our lives and society [5].The artistic research case study will critically investigate the multi-dimensional spaces of existing places and their opening and closing with different materials through embodied and tangible technology.The aim is to provoke thought, raise questions, and stimulate discussions about appropriation and mental health.The results of the case studies will be used to provide guidelines for designing opportunity spaces for informal learning.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
RQ: How can we create children´s opportunity spaces for IFL by adding a technological layer onto an existing space through environmental appropriation?
• SRQ1: How can existing spaces be (critically) designed to create an opportunity for children´s informal learning?(Opportunity for informal learning) • SRQ2: What materiality and technology enable temporal opportunity spaces and the appropriation of the city to facilitate informal learning (with multiple used layers)?• SRQ3: How can media architecture, playful, embodied, and tangible interaction design help children critically appropriate space for informal learning?(Playful and tangible appropriation) 6 RESEARCH ACTIVITIES 6.1 How can existing spaces be (critically) designed to create an opportunity for children´s informal learning?(Opportunity for informal learning) (SRQ1) This observation focuses on children's interactions in public spaces and their ability to transform and appropriate existing spaces.It uses critical lenses to examine individual circumstances, such as places, materials, nature, technology, learning, embodied interactions, time, interest, opening and closing.The study investigates the emergence of temporary, invisible spaces where education can occur and disappear afterwards.The study will observe everyday places, such as school routes or bus stops, to understand the daily habits of individuals and groups.The collected data will be used to design a participatory workshop to create new spaces for children.
6.2 What materiality and technology enable temporal opportunity spaces and the appropriation of the city to facilitate informal learning (with multiple used layers)?(SRQ2) In this Artistic research, I plan to expand existing spaces through material and materiality studies.In the material exploration, I will explore the quality and properties of materials in relation to the body, time, and ephemerality within temporal spaces.The research aims to make the invisibility of appropriated places visible and emphasize social and mental engagement in creating space.The study will explore various media and materials, such as sound, vibration, light, shadow, water, textile, movement, and nature.The connection between technology and materialities will be tested, evoking emotional relations and expanding mental space in public spaces.
6.3 How can playful -, embodied-, and tangible interaction design help children critically appropriate space for informal learning?(Playful and tangible appropriation) (SRQ3) In this Design Research, I plan to speculate on future opportunity spaces in everyday situations.Therefore I plan to co-design temporal opportunity spaces for informal education through a speculative design workshop with children, exploring existing spaces, investigating different groups, and envisioning technological extensions in urban spaces.The inclusion of children in the creative process will help plan future developments and provide alternative perspectives.I will include the data collected in the observation study, exploration findings of the material, artistic research study, and the outcome of the speculative design workshop to design Interventions for everyday interaction in public spaces for informal education, aiming to encourage children's creativity, social interaction, and improve well-being.The next step will be to evaluate opportunity spaces for informal learning through operationalizations, such as open questioners, participatory data physicalization, and observations, using noticeable criteria and theoretical constructs.

TIMETABLE / PLANED PUBLICATIONS
I am starting my second year of my PhD with conducting observations in public spaces.I plan to investigate how children playfully appropriate space in public environments for informal learning.In the second and third years, I will explore artistically temporal opportunity spaces with multiple layers of technology through place-based experiences with different materials, sound, vibration, haptic, light, and AR.In my second year, I will conduct a participatory speculative design workshop, inviting children to design playful, embodied, and tangible interaction technologies in the built environment.In the third year, I will explore materials and technology that enrich the sensory, embodied, and tangible experience in temporal opportunity spaces.I will design interventions for public spaces, building tangible, embodied objects and tools, and I will be installing them in the city environment.I plan to evaluate these interventions in the third year to determine if they support children's informal learning in public environments.I am currently doing physical experiments and material studies, which I will bring into my design workshops with the children and implement into the design interventions.For this, I use haptic materials and observe how their change and movement through the body affect the situations in the space.I hope that by participating at the TEI DC, I can get feedback and knowledge about the extensibility of tangibility.I want to generate more constructive knowledge to make sense of the design of tangible spaces and the use of embodied materials with technology.

CONTRIBUTION
Through the design of Interventions, I want to probe and prove how design and interaction technology can enhance the opportunity spaces for IFL.The Interventions will be examples of opportunity spaces for the public space, which will be installed and can be tried out by the public.I want to provide insights into how we can design opportunity spaces for IFL.These insights can be a guide for future urban planning with tangible technology, where we orientate towards the children´s needs.A catalogue of inspiration will be created for researchers, sociologists, urban designers, architects, and technicians.This catalogue will serve as a tool for adults to expand their imagination for technological implementation and make the world of children more visible.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Visualisation of the research plan, including all layers of research activities

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Design interventions will be placed in the public space

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI
want to thank my supervisors, Christopher Frauenberger and Verena Fuchsberger, for their guidance.This research project is part of the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg and Salzburg University of Applied Sciences doctoral college doc.hci -Designing Meaningful