| Syamimi Binti Sabarudin |
Syamimi is a social designer. Her practice centres on understanding how people relate to one another in everyday spaces, and how design can act as an invitation for connection. She explores themes of intergenerational interaction, children-led participation, and care within neighbourhoods.
Working through fieldwork, prototyping, and facilitation, she translates lived experiences into playful and participatory interventions that bring people together and challenge invisible social boundaries.
Outside of her practice, she enjoys making and sipping hojicha lattes.
Can Still Play!
Can Still Play! is a design research project that explores how play can foster connections across different generations within public housing playgrounds. Rooted in the belief that play is a shared and familiar language, the project recognises that people of all ages have experienced play at some point in their lives. This shared experience makes play a natural and accessible entry point for interaction, connection, and participation within neighbourhood spaces.
The project began through observations of everyday life in Hougang, where I spent time getting to know children, parents, and residents through MakanBersama communal dinners and weekly playground activations held every Friday evening. Through these regular engagements, I observed that while children were often actively engaged in play, many adults, particularly parents and caregivers, remained on the sidelines as observers. Although playgrounds are designed as communal spaces, interactions across generations did not always happen naturally. This raised questions about how existing playground environments may support or limit intergenerational play, and how design might respond to these everyday conditions.
To respond to this, Can Still Play! focuses on parent-child play interactions as an entry point for broader community connection. Working closely with children and families in the neighbourhood, the project draws from games, stories, and play behaviours shared directly by the children and their parents. These community-led inputs became the foundation for a series of playful prompts and invitations designed to lower social barriers and encourage participation.
Rather than introducing entirely new forms of play, the project builds on existing play cultures already present within the community. The prompts are designed to adapt to different energy levels and comfort zones, allowing individuals to join actively, observe from a distance, or reshape the activity in their own way.
Through these everyday moments of play, Can Still Play! reimagines the playground as a shared social space where families, caregivers, and residents can connect, co-create, and build stronger relationships across generations.