ABSTRACT

Spending time outdoors and in nature is known to be beneficial for your mental health and physical wellbeing. Regardless, people’s perception of what being outdoors might involve, and their knowledge about nature, varies individually and culturally. These differences become increasingly visible in multicultural communities. Yet, the knowledge about why and how one can stimulate more activity in the local outdoors environment is poor. This thesis, therefore, studies how we can design for experiences, behavior change, and activity in the outdoor areas at Romsås to increase the wellbeing of the residents. The focus of our study is on engaging children and their guardians to use the outdoors through storytelling and play.

Ethnographic research was conducted to obtain findings from the community and culture at Romsås. In-depth interviews, cultural probing, active and passive observations, and an analysis of a local Facebook-group’s content was conducted and deliberated on in relation to existing theoretical data.

In some cultures the woods are considered a place connected with fear and many do not have “the right to roam”, allemannsretten, as Norway has. Without previous experiences with the woodlands, people do not know where to go, what to do or how to dress properly. Not knowing leads people to not participate, meaning there is a need for guidance and an easily accessible information channel.

The research indicates that preschoolers can easily contribute to research through storytelling as long as the conditions are correctly facilitated for. It is important to be present in the environment that researchers are collecting data about, stating a short, and simple narrative and task in addition to having a facilitator that listens while the kids perform and explain their assignment.

Bluppi Reiser is a design proposal that utilizes transmedia storytelling to inform and engage with children and their guardians in the local outdoor environment through play. The concept spreads across pedagogic books, a game app and web page, where it blurs the line between the real world and imagination. Enticing consumers to move around and discover new areas in the outdoors. Footprints extracted from the story mark pathways to local meeting places and hiking destinations. Children and adults help the alien Bluppi understand us through facilitation of imagination, thus the participants can add and create more content
to bring their personalized Bluppi to life.

As Bluppi is an abstract figure, it is a starting point that has potential to introduce new topics in relation to events such as the litter picking day “rusken”, discussion of hard feelings or cultural differences. Considering Bluppi being an alien, the character is by fault a vulnerable outsider playing on people's empathy to create engagement.

The concept is dependent on the municipality taking responsibility for IT and management of the service. Further work should involve visualization of content and user-testing to quality check the analysis done through this thesis.