The Outside Play website was designed by the collaborative team to act as a centralized hub for education that supports parents in encouraging their children to engage in safe and valuable outdoor play.  To ensure the platform meets the needs of its prospective users, parents, caregivers and early childhood educators were consulted in the development process. To help teach parents, caregivers, and early childhood educators about the importance of risk taking in child development, the website contains learning modules with interactive and animated videos to help users reflect on their child or students current lifestyle compared to their own as a child.

When utilizing the platform, users are taught to manage risky outdoor play scenarios with interactive animated videos that allow them to make choices about a child’s outdoor play and understand the different outcomes that result from their choice. For example, the user may be put in a scenario with a child climbing a tree where they must decide whether to observe or intervene. By engaging with these scenarios, users can recognize and grapple with common challenges in allowing outside play, and help them overcome them. These engaging activities also allow users to make an action plan with goals to support outdoor play.