Affordances of construction toys

While affordances and play experiences are both topics of high interest in design research, there is a need to better understand the relationship between affordances and toys. The aim of this study is to shed light on how affordances of construction toys influence the play experiences of children, comparing play situations enabled by two different construction sets in a series of play sessions with children aged 5 and 6. The play sessions were recorded and analysed to identify perceived affordances. The study shows that both functional and narrative affordances are important for initiating and maintaining the play experience, and exposes a possible division of narrative affordances in relation to a construction set in instant and latent affordances. A focus on these affordances has potentials for aiding designers to create construction toys that better support children in initiating and maintaining play, and may even offer new perspectives in other design domains.