Computerizing a Candy Cane Jungle Gym
Innovation Corner
Today, I want to take a look at how we can break down the concept of a jungle gym through the lens of the mental model to look for potential improvements to experience for our kids.
In my original series on innovation, we went through a sequence of questioning the models that make up a circumstance or entity until we got to a very low level, where the models are no longer easy to change and therefore not subject to much improvement. Then, we built them back up by swapping the models that can change with new models from other disciplines to produce creative ideas. Let’s take this approach here.
We begin by citing the purpose of the jungle gym, which is to create a fun, adventurous landscape for kids to climb, play games, and challenge themselves.
Keeping that purpose in mind, let’s walk down the models that make up a jungle gym. On first look, I’d qualify a jungle gym as an invention more so than force, system, or contract (see Glossary on Mental Models, A Strategy to Achieve Innovation and Creativity), and I would break it into three parts: 1) the physical aspect of the jungle gym structure, 2) a psychological aspect for both child and parent, and 3) a municipal aspect for a public playground or a business aspect for a private playground in which the jungle gym resides.
The Physical
Physically, the jungle gym is an artificial creation, and it generally has all static parts. I have seen some jungle gyms with small moving pieces on them that are meant to entertain, but it is probably important that moving parts are not too large or complex as kids are the main users of the jungle gym — and their safety needs to be ensured. That being said, I do think movement of the jungle gym in small quantities is a model that improves the experience because kids are excited when they can make things happen through cause and effect, such as spinning a dial or pulling a lever.
One of the irreplaceable models of a jungle gym that is prerequisite to childish joy, is the structural integrity of the gym itself. It has to be safe and able to withstand the strongest of kids pulling on it and hanging from it. It also has to withstand prolonged cold and sunlight to certain degrees. Similarly, the jungle gym has to be designed with a balance between adventure and safety. No parent wants a treacherous jungle gym, and no kid wants a boring jungle gym. Material and shape constraints have to be applied to the design. These are constraints not based on lower-level unchanging fundamental models such as gravity or human psychology, but on the purpose of the invention itself. In theory, we can make the jungle gym out of anything. In fact, it would probably be more fun for our kids if it were made of candy cane towers, but it likely wouldn’t endure. Practically, we probably can’t (and shouldn’t) do much better than strong plastic or metal and a moderately challenging landscape design. Some jungle gyms “up the ante” with rope netting for climbing, which I remember was in fact a bit more fun, but also resulted in more visits to the nurse.
As we try to improve jungle gyms, if we search for models to change more fundamental than the design materials, we eventually get to low-level models such as gravity and states of matter. But likely we do not need to go to a level that fundamental. As parents wouldn’t jungle gyms to float or melt, we can stop above that at the materials constraints in the previous paragraph.
When searching for models to improve the physical aspect of the jungle gym, materials are as good as can be. Likewise, as long as the jungle gym design is safe, the models for how to design it become more psychological ones based on creating a fun time for its youthful customers than structural ones.
Something worth noting is that, physically, the jungle gym is a pretty “dumb” invention in the sense that it has no embedded computerized parts, which means it has a very limited ability to react to any kind of input. If we computerized jungle gyms, they might be able to change color, broadcast text messages for hurt knees, or even reshape at the push of a button establishing new and exciting designs. Clearly these are more expensive jungle gyms to design, but computing power and networking infrastructure also get cheaper every day. Perhaps at some point, jungle gyms will be able to take vocal orders for the kind of jungle gym experience a kid wants, and then produce a suitable design.
The Psychological
The psychological aspect is all about adventure and intrigue versus safety. The lowest level models of the jungle gym from a psychological perspective are the need for physical excitement for the kid and the need for child safety for the parent. Changing or disabling these would probably remove the need for the jungle gym or produce pretty dangerous alternative adventures for kids. These models are built into our psychology with good reason though, and will probably never change. So our jungle gym has to be both exciting and safe. We dealt a lot with safety in the physical aspect above. Here, we will focus on making the jungle gym exciting.
The model I see first as most important is variety. There is a reason that no kid spends too much time on the repetitive monkey bars in a single playground visit. A jungle gym should have a good variety of structures to climb, colors to observe, and different heights to conquer. The larger and more varied it is, the more excitement for kids. Most jungle gyms are constrained by public park space, but I have seen a few in mega-malls and of course in Chuck E. Cheeses that are quite a bit larger. With more variety comes more creativity. Kids can have larger adventures and create more games. Adding small moving parts adds another dimension to the variety as well.
We also want to make sure there are multiple “skill” levels in a single gym so that more reserved kids can feel comfortable and more rambunctious kids can go wild to a reasonable extent. Additionally, adding “sub-areas” of gyms to the design, which divide it up, can provide space for many different groups of children at once. This allows different groups of friends to play different games and be in different spaces where they are comfortable all within the same jungle gym.
Again, the computerization of the jungle gym comes to mind as an avenue to up our variety-excitement game. We could add a self-redesigning jungle gym to produce new designs while kids take a break or a slow moving redesign feature for older kids while in use. Computerization could proportionally up the safety game as well with real-time monitoring of falls, playback, and medical suggestions from the web for what injuries might have been observed.
The Municipal (and the Private)
As taxpayers, we should expect a city to provide some public space for parks and within that, some space for kids to have fun. I suppose whether enough tax revenue goes to that varies by town. Growing up in the city, I always struggled to find a decent spot to play. It seemed grass fields were always just out of reach beyond fences designed to grow them, and playgrounds were always fairly full. Public parks were always a large issue come election time.
Apart from creating enough parks and jungle gyms, a city has a responsibility to keep them cleaned, monitored and maintained. To avoid this means angry citizens and lawsuits, which is a fairly low-level, unchanging model for a municipality. The administration won’t last long if every single citizen is angry with it and one of the best ways I can think of to insight this is to build dirty, faulty jungle gyms. If the town needs to keep citizens happy with public parks spaces, then it needs to maintain them.
The excitement purpose of the jungle gym is probably less concerning to the municipality directly though unless perhaps a mayor’s child visits a park and wants to know why there is a boring jungle gym built there. Citizens that are parents would probably have to push for variety which means their kids would have to indicate that they want more variety. Because a jungle gym in a park is a publicly owned object, there will be inherently more difficulty to improve it past what it is. On top of that, as kids are the main customers, there will be less adult citizens driven to do so. I am right now imagining a group of kids on strike from school demanding more modern jungle gyms — a good idea for a sitcom episode. Likely, to start working toward a more modern jungle gym, someone would have to build a privately-owned gym first to normalize and propagate the idea.
How can we build the perfect jungle gym?
We keep the material design the same, and we keep the same constraints in place to ensure safety. We continue to seek a variety of heights, colors, and moving parts in our designs to create more adventure and excitement. Computerization could supplement this variety to grow excitement with new designs and would also add a proportional growth in safety through monitoring. To move the initiative forward, someone would probably have to create a privatized jungle gym initially similar to a Chuck E. Cheese-type business or we’d have to advocate to the city to update parks with our new designs. We’ll leave out the candy canes for now.
Thank You for reading!
You are invited to have a look at Part 1 of my series describing a strategy for innovation and creativity.
