The UN Human Development Report¹ emphasises the critical link between mental health and humanity’s ability to cope with global risks, highlighting the need for treatment and prevention. Family networks play a key role in mental well-being, especially for grandparents², yet increasing geographical separation between generations can lead to estrangement. Although digital communication helps to maintain these bonds, excessive screen use negatively affects children’s mental well-being.³ 

Design reflects and reinforces modernist values, perpetuating consumerism and unsustainable practices. It highlights problematising “the affective and conceptual operations that form the basis of our relations with the world”.⁴ Typically centred on innovation and efficiency, design often neglects “the real needs of society and life at large”.⁵ Instead, Madina Tlostanova advocates for a transformative learning process that “should become continuously transcending and transforming for all participants”,⁶ fostering multiple histories and systems over singular narratives, thus moving away from Western dualistic thinking toward a more relational value system. This shift prepares designers to navigate social, environmental, and political interdependencies, ensuring participatory and just processes. Therefore, design is “relational and experimental by definition, and in its best realisations it does not divide knowing from doing”.⁷ 

We present EKA’s Sensorial Design Research group’s (SeDe) ongoing project, Enhancing Intergenerational Mental Wellbeing: Embodied Play for Children and Their Remote Grandparents (shortly, Remote Grandparents). This project aims to develop design methods and prototypes that enhance the relationship between children and their remote grandparents through play.

Play is crucial for development and well-being across a person’s lifespan, supporting cognitive, emotional, and social growth. It enhances learning and creativity in childhood, while in adulthood, it promotes stress relief, mental flexibility, and social bonding.⁸ Play helps older adults maintain cognitive function and social engagement, contributing to a higher quality of life.⁹ In this context, we explore the potential for designers and researchers to use relational design sensitivities to discover alternative remote communication approaches for designing play while emphasising the more-than-human aspect of these interactions. 

This paper will focus on technology as a non-human entity that plays a crucial role in how children play remotely with their grandparents. This perspective invites us to think creatively about how design can foster deeper connections among family members and the environments and materials surrounding them. For instance, intergenerational online meeting¹⁰ offers ways for grandparents and grandchildren to stay connected when physically distant. The example explores how families creatively adapted to online communication, often using tangible objects and shared physical spaces to talk, show, or play in digital interactions. Another example, designing for oral storytelling at home from a parental perspective, examines how technology can enhance family storytelling – traditionally an oral practice that helps shape identity.¹¹ Through a co-design workshop with parents and designers, the study identifies design opportunities focused on flexibility, shared experiences, minimalism, and autobiographical memories through storytelling, reinforcing play as a connection and shared reflection tool.

In a more-than-human framework that values complex interconnections, we strive to create design methods and prototypes that benefit society holistically, promoting empathy, understanding, and a sense of responsibility toward all entities involved in these relationships.

In design processes, the concept of relationality emphasises three significant sensitivities: (i) recognising mutual influence and co-creation among actors and artefacts; (ii) fostering and promoting emergent and improvised actions; and (iii) viewing the system as an assemblage or networks of actors, artefacts, or collective hybrids.¹² By caring for the mutual influences, considering systems as wholes, and the human and non-human actors in those systems, relational design appreciates and enables choices that value the multiplicity of species and sustainable developments.

We value the mutual influences and co-creation of individuals and artefacts in Remote Grandparents by recognising the unique ecosystems and environments of families who live partially apart. We understand that each family member impacts others and that they, in turn, are influenced by their surroundings – such as their room, house, garden, community, country, and culture. A significant non-human actor we recognise is the communication technology facilitating interaction over long distances. We shape this medium, understanding that it also influences us. By including children and their remote grandparents in the initial ideation process, we engage with their experiences through another family member, respecting their privacy and maintaining a familiar environment.

We accommodate their experiences within their unique relationships and settings by allowing the researcher and grandparent enough freedom and space to choose activities that align with the child and family’s preferences. Additionally, we incorporate non-human actors such as materials and prototypes into the ideation process as metaphors to discuss sensory experiences or memories that may otherwise be difficult to articulate.

Our process encourages and supports emergent and improvised actions by providing a set of prepared activities that the researcher can choose from, depending on the situation and their observations of how the child and grandparent interact during the session. Each activity may evolve as it unfolds and can last as long as is comfortable and age-appropriate for all participants. Each subsequent activity is encouraged to be built based on the outcomes of the previous one. Since the process aims to explore ways to enhance embodied play between children and their remote grandparents, the scope remains broad during this phase of the study to allow for various ideas and spontaneous interactions.

When designing embodied play experiences for children and their remote grandparents, we must view the family and their environment as a network of individuals and objects. The parent plays a crucial role in this interaction, especially when the children are 4–7 years old. The parent often facilitates and encourages the child’s interactions with their distant grandparent, especially when using technology. Additionally, those parents typically lack the support of their parents, who would assist with childcare if they lived nearby. Therefore, the prototype we create must allow for easy interaction between the child and grandparent with minimal involvement from the parent, ensuring that it can be seamlessly integrated into the family network.

More-than-human in relational design emphasises the interconnectedness of human and non-human elements within the design process.¹³ Humans are not the sole agents within various systems but rather coexist with other species, objects, and technologies in interconnected networks of mutual influence.¹⁴ This aims to consider human needs and the agency of non-human entities, thereby promoting a more inclusive understanding of life and design practices. For instance, we investigate human and non-human interactions through technology, which plays an essential role in understanding the interconnection of the mutual influence of technology on children, their grandparents, and vice versa. These objects lead to shared experiences and improvised actions between them in a collective hybrid environment.

Contemporary society struggles with complex, multi-layered ‘wicked problems’¹⁵ that demand collaborative efforts across scales, actors, and disciplines rather than isolated initiatives led by single organisations.¹⁶ As Jörn Frenzel illustrates, “the task of design in such a world is to visualise complexity across different scales and lenses, to hold the uncertainty of design outcomes in a dynamic world in different scenarios and to measure the possible outcomes and their meaning for society”.¹⁷ 

In this project, we intentionally centre the child as the primary actor when designing for the well-being of both children and their remote grandparents. The resulting play must primarily engage the child, as the grandparent is typically more adaptable and motivated to maintain contact with the child. To ensure the effectiveness of the play, we focus on the child’s cognitive and physical development.

While non-human actors such as technologies and toys can sometimes hinder family connections in shared physical spaces, such as when a family member is distracted by a smartphone or a child becomes engrossed in immersive play, these same actors can become valuable enablers of relationships in remote settings. By recognising the agency of these non-human actors, we aim to explore how design can contribute to a more relational process. For instance, challenges posed by technology, such as poor data connections, can inspire creative solutions that bridge generational divides.

Children experience reduced opportunities for play, including free play, which is crucial for developing creativity, leadership, and social skills. A contributing factor is the lack of nearby caregivers, such as grandparents.¹⁸ In this project, we aim to use technology to recreate the bodily activity and sensory richness that intergenerational play typically offers when grandparents live close by. Through this mediated connection, we hope to bring the joys and benefits of embodied, intergenerational play back into the lives of remote families.