Taking the tedium out of the waiting room for the hospital’s youngest visitors, DesignTex‘s Play Date system offers children to redecorate the walls with colorful magnets and a pens.

Drawing upon research into ‘positive distraction’ in pediatric healthcare, Play Date is a two-part wall treatment system that allows children to transform hospital waiting rooms with geometric magnets and brightly colored pens

First, an impact-resistant wall treatment is digitally printed with a grid overlaid with large-scale, colorful shapes. Second, a ferrous wall is similarly printed with a grid to provide the backdrop for a set of vividly colored magnetic shapes, which are repositionable on the ferrous wall and finished with a dry-erase film to create a writable surface.

Play Date is unique in utilizing dry-erase film both on its magnetic decals and its supporting ferrous wall-as a result, these decals are not only movable elements on a writable and erasable wall, but also themselves become a space for drawing or writing messages, allowing children to take charge of the healthcare waiting room and transform it through play.

The decals are customizable in shape and can be digitally printed in a variety of colors and patterns, as required. In addition, each element of the Play Date system may be used independently-as an impact-resistant wall treatment in high-traffic environments or as an interactive design game of shape and color. Beyond healthcare, Play Date has applications in wayfinding systems, and in office and education settings.