The project aimed to explore how children can have more meaningful engagements with their long-distance families through "Play." The hope was that play would become a means of constructing and confirming social identities that bring a sense of community in addition to joy and imagination. Furthermore, it intended to create a 'tool' to combine the physical and digital world to develop methods of play that adapt to the 'new normal' world and support open-ended play, imagination, and innovation.
'Hey Play' is a concept app connecting grandchildren with their long-distance grandparents through personalized gameplay. It is a video calling app designed to incorporate the physical and cognitive differences between the generations. Users upload photographs of their everyday life, and the app's AI converts them into playful, personalized activities. This interaction would help cultivate and maintain an emotional bond despite the distance.
