Jalen Gubatan
Grown Up Play
Authentic, playful living – Tools, toys & pitches to curate play every day.
Daunting, ambiguous and personalized - What does play look like and how do you design for it?
Prioritizing play and identities based in play increase motivation and excitement, reduce opportunities for burnout and empower authentic living. Grown Up Play is a methodology that quantifies play, packaged in the form of scalable tools; for individuals to reflect and take informed, decisive action towards playful living and for designers to create meaningful, engaging experiences and products around play.
Insight
Adults have become increasingly dissatisfied and burnt out in most recent years. They seek work-life balance, but work is a part of life and they are just in need of life balance. Adults strongly identify with their occupation but what does an identity based in play look like? Seeking to address and cure burnout through play- play also needs to be integrated as a part of life. For that people need proper motivation to incite and repeatedly play.
Idea
All adults were children first, but very few of them remember that. The aim of Grown Up Play is to teach adults to live playfully. The grown up you is the child that never became anyone else; the good news is they’re still there and they want to play. Play is free, voluntary activity so it cannot be forced. This is a scalable teaching methodology with tools for individuals to reflect and curate for themselves and for creators to help guide and empower playful living through their work.
Impact
Currently, everything we do is for something: an extrinsic goal, appearance to others, financial or other obligation. But as more of life becomes automated people will have more time to do what they want, and many won’t know what that is. By living playfully, people will be able to live more authentically and explore, discover and experience things they want. As people engage and further their passions, increasing their mastery and skill, their output is becoming a recognized and valued asset. They can operate in fields and communities where they thrive and no longer experience occupational burnout.
Biography
In her work, Jalen believes anything worth doing is worth doing right. She is passionate about creating meaningful and experiential moments and products through many mediums. Outside of work, she is a proud plant mom raising a baby jungle, the coordinator of Jus Kickin’ It Toronto and 1⁄4 of the Sneaker Sinz Podcast.