Team Beam: Economizing Children’s Bee-Havioral Development

This research paper uses behavioral economics to design a children’s play installation that facilitates soft skill development. By reviewing existing literature from Education, Early Development and Behavioral Economics, my installation supports improvements in collaborative behaviours within child-child and parent-child relationships. Literature across research disciplines explains how early soft skill achievement influences life course outcomes at school, work, home and in personal relationships. The installation’s user difficulty, material composition, colouring and incentives nudge children aged 2–4 toward making emotionally beneficial decisions. Because it is designed for a museum setting, the assumed expectations of installation users, other visitors and the host museum are acknowledged in the design. The installation’s assumed effectiveness, specific location and accessibility features are produced from personal work experiences at the Royal Ontario Museum, interviews with field professionals, attention to parents’ agency, existing literature focused on inclusive, play-based spaces and an iterative creative process based on design thinking methodology.